Aung San Suu Kyi has been re-elected as leader of the Burma's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) at the end of its first ever congress.
The inexperienced party held its congress this weekend aiming to push forward positions that will become increasingly important in the run-up to a 2015 election in Myanmar that could sweep it into government.
For years Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) had the singular, unswerving objective of ending rule by the generals who hounded it and locked up its leaders.
Ms Suu Kyi's was unanimously elected by the party's central committee, the AFP news agency reported.
In her speech yesterday, the NLD chairwoman acknowledged there had been infighting and factionalism within the party.
"For the benefit of the country we should unite and get along," the Nobel laureate told the assembled 900 delegates.
The NLD has not set out its aims and spelt out how it will achieve them.
Foreign investors are moving in but uncertainty remains while the investment and financial climate evolves. The prospect of Ms Suu Kyi's NLD taking the reins of government brings additional risk, especially if its policies are vague.
"The biggest problem is the NLD needs more policy expertise - not who calls the shots, but they need to bring in more outside experts who can help them craft a policy platform and, potentially, govern," said Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in the United States.
"While the current government is ok, it is still putting into place decent policies in an essentially authoritarian framework, so an NLD victory would open up politics and make it more democratic. They just need to bring in more policy expertise."
While Ms Suu Kyi has become an influential voice in the newly empowered parliament, political analysts say the NLD has few real policies beyond its famous chairwoman's statements.
Suu Kyi co-founded the party in 1988, just after the military crushed a months-long democracy uprising and after years of military rule when opposition parties were banned.
The party was defined by its opposition to the military and easily won a 1990 election. But the junta refused to accept the result. Suu Kyi and many party members spent years in detention.
Struggling to survive, the party did little work on policy. But even during the reform process that began in 2011, and has seen the military surrender rule to a government run by ex-soldiers, it has not set out an agenda.
The party issued a two-page manifesto for by-elections in April 2012 that put Suu Kyi and 42 NLD colleagues in parliament, after they boycotted a general election in November 2010.
It made the rule of law, internal peace and reforming the constitution top priorities. The constitution was ratified after a fraudulent referendum in 2008 and it reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats for military personnel, effectively giving the military a veto.
Reuters/AFP