NLD captured 21 lower house seats on Friday, the election commission said, taking its total to 348 seats with 82.9 percent of the vote now confirmed. Suu Kyi’s success had been extensively expected, still few anticipated a landslide of such dramatic proportions.
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Burma’s combined houses of parliament are made up of 664 seats, but elections were not held in seven constituencies, meaning a simple majority could be reached with 329 seats.
The defeat of the incumbent party was truly crushing, and the army-backed Union Solidarity and the Development Party gained only 40 seats.
Those who voted Sunday said they felt a thrill knowing that their country might be guided by the will of the people after so many years of military domination. Of military rule in Myanmar, the results have shown a resounding rejection, that has been under army control for half a century.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest, has said that a triumph for the NLD would place her “above the president”. The Japanese government has welcomed the election as a “major step toward democratization” of Myanmar and expressed hopes for further reforms.
That means the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi has the right to form a new government independently.
The military in Burma – which is also known as Myanmar – took power in a 1962 coup and brutally suppressed several pro-democracy uprisings during its rule.
The president’s spokesman said on Wednesday that the government would obey the results and work to transfer power peacefully, after offering congratulations to Aung San Suu Kyi.
The ruling party of Thein Sein has promised the outcome of the vote will be respected, but the system is configured strongly in favor of the military, which gets to appoint a quarter of all lawmakers in the two houses of parliament.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Suu Kyi for her election win, but also hailed the “courage and vision” of Thein Sein for “leadership in the reform process”.
The victory completes her transformation from an icon of democratic struggle against a military regime that branded her a traitor to a political leader who now has responsibility for governing this Southeast Asian nation of 51 million people, which is trying to catch up from lost decades of underdevelopment and isolation. The dictatorship, with Suu Kyi in mind, inserted a clause into the constitution barring anyone with foreign-born children from serving as president.
Suu Kyi has tried to woo the military contingent, saying she bears no ill will toward the military her father founded and pointing out that just one courageous military officer would need to break ranks to permit changes to the constitution.
Once the “lame duck” session has concluded, the new NLD-dominated parliament will gather and choose a new speaker, two vice-presidents and a president.
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In a state of emergency, a special military-led body can even assume state powers.
