Myanmar’s ruling party conceded defeat on Monday after preliminary election results showed that the opposition party led by democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi is on track to win a landslide victory and form the country’s first democratically elected government since the early 1960s.
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An NLD spokesman said it expected to win about 70% of seats.
The Yangon result was not announced by the government’s Union Election Commission, but the NLD has stationed representatives at counting centers and is keeping tallies that are being relayed to its headquarters.
“We will win a landslide”, Nyan Win, another NLD spokesman, told AP.
Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi Monday urged the people to stay dispassionate and calm ahead of the official announcement of the election result.
That’s a tall task, reports the BBC, because “a quarter of the parliamentary seats are reserved for the army”, and that means the NLD will have to win about two-thirds of the contested seats.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the NLD party headquarters, waving flags and cheering as results were announced and projected onto a screen hung from the building.
Timothy Thursday couldn’t stop worrying about his family as he waited Monday for final results from the election in Myanmar.
But Ms Suu Kyi can not become president because the constitution bars anyone with foreign children from holding the post.
In what has been seen as a direct challenge to the power of the generals, Suu Kyi has vowed that if her party wins the election, she will run the country from a position “above the president” after appointing a puppet to the position.
Russel said it was too early to make pronouncements on the overall conduct of Sunday’s voting and it was premature to say whether the election could lead to a lifting of remaining USA sanctions.
The military and the largest parties in the upper house and the lower house will each nominate a candidate for president.
The USDP won three of the seats, while the ethnic Wa Democratic Party won one and the ethnic Kachin Democratic Party won another.
The constitution still guarantees one-quarter of parliament’s seats to members of the armed forces. Party leader Aung San Suu Kyi said: “I think you all have the idea of the results”.
The USA, he said, congratulates people of Burma on the election, and commend all of the people and institutions in the country who worked together to hold a peaceful and historic election. That indicates the party could be on its way to capturing the presidency of the Southeast Asian country, and further loosening the stranglehold that the nation’s military has had.
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“In the first free and fair election in 25 years, in the November 8 election I have to confess that the USDP has lost to the NLD”.
