Election results released demonstrated Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy had won 348 parliamentary seats than the 329 required to command both houses of the legislature, with about 20% of seats still to be determined.
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The ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) had won just 40 seats as of Friday afternoon.
Ms Suu Kyi has declared, however, that she will become the country’s de facto leader, acting “above the president” if her party forms the next government, and that the new president will be a figurehead.
Congratulations to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi & the NLD on their historic win.
The extent of the drubbing by the opposition was a major shock given the entrenchment of the military institution, which still allocated one-fourth of the seats in both chambers of parliament.
Sunday’s polls are the first general election the party has contested since – and its 80 percent sweep of the elected seats is a mirror image of the results it won a generation ago.
Her father’s greatest political triumph happened before she was likely to have had any memory of it. Suu Kyi’s father, a general, garnered Burma’s independence from Britain by uniting the country’s national groups, and signed the independence agreement with British prime minister Clement Attlee in January of 1947. Friday’s majority announcement came exactly five years to the day when Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest.
“I promise everybody who is living in this country proper protection in accordance with the law, and in accordance with the norms of human rights”, she said.
Suu Kyi herself was put under house arrest prior to the 1990 election, and spent 15 of the next 22 years mostly confined to her lakeside villa in Yangon.
On November 12, she delivered a briefing on Myanmar’s election as part of ASPI’s AsiaConnect series.
Obama and Ban also praised Thein Sein for successfully staging the historic poll, with the United Nations chief acknowledging his “courage and vision” to organise an election in which the ruling camp was trounced. Bruce, this victory ends decades of military rule and validates Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s vast struggle for freedom in her country.
The army retains control over three of the most important ministries, including defense and border affairs, and wrote a constitution that bars anyone with close foreign relatives from becoming president.
The first possibility would be a decisive victory for the NLD with a majority, minus the 25 per cent quota held by the Myanmar military.
The two reiterated their commitment to respect the result and agreed to Ms Suu Kyi’s request to hold reconciliation talks soon, although the parties are still to agree on the details.
“We will have to try very hard”. The NLD is yet to disclose the person they have selected for the presidency.
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The military’s reserved seats give it veto power over constitutional changes, but Ms. Suu Kyi’s party will be able to pass all legislative bills. “He will act in accordance with the decisions of the party”, said Suu Kyi in an interview with Channel News Asia, adding that the president would be “told exactly what he can do”.
