For a country that has experienced almost nothing but misery, abuses, and economic mismanagement since the army first took power in 1962, the scenes from Sunday’s by-elections in the new, civilian Burmese parliament seemed nothing short of miraculous. The military’s favored party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), took a paltry handful of seats. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been under arrest just two years ago, won a parliamentary seat. And her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), swept to an overwhelming triumph, apparently taking 43 out of the 44 seats it contested. As the election results began to trickle out Sunday, thousands of supporters of the NLD gathered at the party headquarters in Rangoon to dance, sing all night long, share sweets, and await a speech by their leader. As one man watching the street celebrations told the Irrawaddy, an exile publication focusing on Burma, “Now the world will know who is who, and what is what”—meaning that now the world will know that the Burmese people still support Suu Kyi and the NLD, even after so many years of repression.

With the by-election having gone so well—international monitors had been allowed in, and despite harassment of NLD candidates before the poll, Election Day was overall judged free and fair—many developed democracies now seem ready to end their sanctions of Burma, resume significant aid programs to the needy country, and encourage sizable foreign investment. But while the by-elections were exciting, Sunday’s vote was not the nail that ended military rule in Burma and solidified democracy. Instead, it can be seen more like the day when Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island: an important step on the path to democratic change, but hardly a sign that the military has stepped out of politics for good.

BURMA’S PROCESS of reform began about a year a half ago, when the long-ruling military junta suddenly held elections and then passed over power, at least technically, to a civilian parliament. At that time, the NLD boycotted the vote, since the election rules were tilted so heavily in favor of military parties; as a result, those parties vastly dominated the new parliament. The new president, Thein Sein, was himself a former military man, but he soon demonstrated what seemed to be a very genuine commitment to reform—or at least a realization that without reform, Burma’s development will sink even farther behind its high-powered neighbors. The former top military leaders formally retired from politics. Thein Sein reached out to Suu Kyi, launching a dialogue with the opposition leader, who says privately that she believes Thein Sein is serious about creating a free-market democracy.

Thein Sein also released hundreds of political prisoners, began to open up the economy and the banking system to outsiders, launched efforts to obtain long-term peace deals with the many ethnic minority armies fighting the Burmese military on the perimeters of the country, and established a national human rights commission. The Burmese media, once a Southeast Asian version of Pravda, started to come to life, publishing interviews with Suu Kyi, criticisms of the government, and far more international news than ever before. New social media and cheaper, less blocked Internet connections also helped bring young Burmese in better touch with the world, and with activists in places like Thailand, China, and the Arab world.

In response to these initial changes, the Obama administration sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma last fall on a goodwill mission, relaxed some minor restrictions on assistance, and increased humanitarian aid to the country. If Burma held successful by-elections, many Obama administration and European officials promised that the West would be prepared to do much more—possibly to normalize all relations with Burma. Some in the Obama administration expect the U.S. to remove nearly all sanctions by next winter.