The bridge in question, which connects the Mawlamyine and Chaungzon townships, will be named after Myanmar’s independence hero General Aung San. Public sentiment in favour of a name more meaningful to the Mon community had been expressed through a series of protests that grew in the weeks leading up to the election. The NLD government escalated the dispute when, in defiance of both local sentiment and the Mon State government’s decision not to name the bridge after Aung San, the national parliament pushed ahead with a bill to make the name official.

One way of understanding this issue is through the lens of ethnic privilege. This perspective argues that the dominant majority ethnic group in Myanmar — the Burmans — benefit from various unearned privileges that accrue to them solely because of their ethnic identity. These privileges are generally invisible to them because they experience them as normal life. Only non-Burmans have an experiential understanding of what it means to be outside the majority. For example, having the government insist upon giving yet more recognition to an ethnic Burman national figure rather than recognising a local ethnic icon.

The initial protest against the bridge in February was led by Mon State Parliament Deputy Speaker Aung Naing Oo of the All Mon Region Democratic Party (AMRDP), one of two ethnic Mon parties. The other is the Mon National Party (MNP), founded by Nai Thet Lwin who has joined the NLD government as Union Affairs Ethnic Minister. The alliance between the NLD and the MNP is strengthened by the fact that Nai Thet Lwin’s daughter, Mi Kon Chan, is an NLD member in the national parliament — although this did not stop her father from criticising her when she introduced the resolution in parliament to name the bridge after Aung San.

While there was considerable talk of a merger of the two Mon parties in 2013, this proposal never came to fruition. Mon State is ethnically diverse, and Mon parties alone are unlikely to be able to compete for power with both the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and NLD in the fray. Instead, the MNP has allied with the NLD in the past and AMRDP more recently with the USDP. Votes for either Mon party while the NLD is in power have the effect of drawing support from the NLD and helping the USDP.

Despite convincing wins by Rakhine and Shan parties on Saturday, ethnic parties generally remain under-resourced, especially when competing with the NLD and USDP. Ethnic parties will have to rely on savvy organising and clear policy platforms to win votes — tools they haven’t yet been able to leverage effectively. In most parts of the country voters still seem to be frustrated at the lack of unification on the part of ethnic parties, which dampens their support.

The NLD benefitted in 2015 from a nationwide desire for ‘change’ — a sentiment that propelled them to electoral success but did not bode well for ethnic party candidates at the time. Now that the NLD isn’t simply campaigning against the USDP, but rather defending its record as a ruling party itself, it may have a harder time getting ethnic votes.

The USDP appears to be a beneficiary in all of this, not only winning the seat in Chaungzon but also securing one in Kengtung, Shan State. In comparison with the NLD’s obtuse stance on the bridge and similar issues, former president U Thein Sein’s policies look downright accommodating. Many voters upset at the NLD’s recent ‘Burmanisation’ moves also appear willing to forget about the USDP’s close affiliation with the Burmese military — the chief architect of Burmanisation for the past five decades.

In this context, the USDP and military bloc voting against Mi Kon Chan’s proposal to name the bridge after Aung San looks like a protest vote. Bridgegate allows these beneficiaries of Burmanisation to position themselves as champions of ethnic rights vis-à-vis an unresponsive and out-of-touch NLD.

The Mon State bridge controversy is only the most recent example of Burman privilege. But the variation in Saturday’s election results demonstrates that frustration over perceived ethnic majority privilege is only one of the dynamics influencing politics in Myanmar. The USDP and some ethnic parties have, in this case, been the beneficiaries of the NLD’s inability to develop more inclusive policies and rhetoric on ethnic issues. But this does not mean the NLD can throw up its hands and blame the results solely on USDP and AMRDP politicking.

While the wise response would be sincere long-term engagement with persistent ethnic discontent, the ruling party seems to be digging in. They seem to have discarded plans to have Aung San Suu Kyi herself officially open the bridge but are not backing down from the name. Until the party changes course, the NLD’s new slogan — ‘together with the people’ — will continue to sound hollow.

Matthew J Walton is the Aung San Suu Kyi Senior Research Fellow in Modern Burmese Studies at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and Elizabeth Rhoads is a PhD candidate and Dickson Poon Fellow at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London.