In a landslide victory, the National League for Democracy, helmed by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, claimed an absolute majority of parliamentary seats.
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Before the election campaign began in early September, Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said the military would only step back from politics once peace prevailed, in the wake of five decades of civil war.
From the controlled democracy of the 2010 and 2012 elections, which graduated Aung San Suu Kyito a pole position within the power structure, Myanmar headed into the 2015 election with a great deal of optimism on November 8.
The Nobel laureate has nevertheless pledged to rule an NLD government through a puppet president, without revealing a candidate or setting out how the arrangement would work.
“The election is the result of our reform process and, as we promised, we were able to hold it very successfully”, he told a meeting of political parties in Yangon in his first public appearance since the polls. Obama on Thursday also called President Thein Sein of the country’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, officials said. He lost his seat in Sunday’s election.Thein Sein’s presidential spokesman and Information Minister Ye Htut said on his Facebook page of Obama: “He said America would continue cooperating with the Myanmar government”. But the country’s military leadership refused to honor the results and instead charted a course of authoritarian rule that included the imprisonment of many pro-democracy advocates.
The National League for Democracy won a similar landslide election victory in 1990.
Suu Kyi has already courted a few controversy in her plan to install as president an NLD stooge who she says will have no authority, even though Myanmar’s constitution states the president “takes precedence over all other persons”.
The daughter of assassinated independence hero Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi is herself barred from becoming president by the country’s junta-era constitution. On October 15 only eight ethnic armed groups out of a negotiating group of 15 signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government after almost two years of talks.
The reformist ex-general wields much influence over current lawmakers and his cooperation in the coming weeks could be vital in removing potential legislative obstacles before the NLD takes office, probably in late March. Announcing the results on Friday, the fifth day of the vote-count, the Union Election Commission (UEC) said NLD had so far won 238 of the 330 contested seats in the 440-member Lower House while 110 of its nominees had been declared elected on 168 contested seats in the 224-member Upper House of parliament.
The party grew out of the unprecedented popular protests erupting against the long-ruling military dictatorship of General Ne Win, who seized power in a military coup in 1962 and sealed off the country from the outside world.
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Although many have lived in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya are not one of the 135 ethnic groups recognised under the country’s citizenship law and are thus entitled to only limited rights.
