New era dawns as Suu Kyi's party strides into Myanmar parliament

Aung San Suu Kyi will lead her party into a new session of Myanmar's parliament Monday, with lofty expectations that the first popularly-elected government in decades can reset a country ground down by half a century of military rule.

Hundreds of new MPs streamed into the Naypyidaw parliament on Monday morning to take up seats won in historic November elections.

The poll saw Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) wrest a majority from the army establishment and spur hopes of a new political era in the long repressed nation.

"We will work to get human rights and democracy as well as peace," NLD MP Nyein Thit told AFP as he arrived at the cavernous parliament building. 

But many of the NLD's lawmakers are political novices in a parliament where 25 percent of all seats are still held by the army.

The inexperienced new government faces a daunting rebuilding task in a country where the economy has been crushed by generations of junta rule.

"It's a historic moment for the country," said Myanmar political analyst Khin Zaw Win of the new parliament, which is stuffed with NLD lawmakers who won nearly 80 percent of elected seats.

"This is what we have tried to do, tried to achieve and fight for all these years, but when the moment really comes a lot of worries come as part of the package," he said, adding that Suu Kyi and her colleagues would have to learn fast on the job.

Suu Kyi is barred from being president by a military-scripted constitution because she married and had children with a foreigner.

She has vowed to sidestep this hurdle by ruling "above" a proxy president, although she has yet to reveal her choice for the role. 

While there is no clear schedule for the selection of candidates, it could be within days.

Elected members of both houses and the military will nominate three candidates to succeed President Thein Sein, who retains his post until the end of March. The new president will then be chosen by a vote of the combined houses.