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1990 Myanmar general election

General election held in Myanmar in 1990

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ4999446 ↗
Source-derived summary

General elections were held in Myanmar on 27 May 1990, the first multi-party elections since 1960, after which the country had been ruled by a military dictatorship. The elections were for a constitutional committee to draft a new constitution.

The result was a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 392 of the 492 seats. However, the military junta refused to recognise the results and continued ruling the country until 2011. Voter turnout was 73%.

Background

The aftermath of the uprising in 1988 and the rise of leader Aung San Suu Kyi placed worldwide media attention on the political situation in Myanmar. In September 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC, the predecessor to the State Peace and Development Council), in its Declaration No. 1, had set four goals for the country: to maintain law and order, improve transportation, improve the humanitarian situation and hold multi-party elections. It also stated that the military would not "cling to power for long". Aung San Suu Kyi had been calling for dialogue between the SLORC and the citizens of Myanmar.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1990 Myanmar general election” as general election held in Myanmar in 1990. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Myanmar, general and election.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 1960, 2011, 1988—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Myanmar, general and election providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1990 Myanmar general election”, the useful work is to connect “general election held in Myanmar in 1990” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4999446. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1960, 2011 and 1988.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1990 Myanmar general election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1990 Myanmar general election primary sources, 1990 Myanmar general election archive and Myanmar research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1990 Myanmar general election”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1990 Myanmar general election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.