With the tally still being counted, the Election Commission said that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party won 21 additional seats – pushing it over the threshold of 329 seats needed for a majority in the 664-member, two-house Parliament.
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Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government ended five decades of military rule in the country in 2011 when it took power following general elections a year earlier that the NLD boycotted amid concerns they were neither free nor fair. World leaders, among them U.S. President Barack Obamahave already called Ms. Suu Kyi offering congratulations.
Thursday 7:15 p.m.
“I think it’s important we know who has won this election, and now the very hard work of moving beyond the human rights abuses of the government comes into play”.
“It’s an improvement on what it was three to four years ago, when India was overcautious with regard to support for the democracy movement in Burma”, she had concluded. Her victory paves the way for a transition to democracy after 50 years of military rule.
Suu Kyi’s elevation into a democracy champion happened nearly by accident when she returned in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.
Suu Kyi’s N-L-D was widely considered to have won that election, but military rulers threw out the results and placed Suu Kyi and many of her colleagues under arrest.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of an independence leader, expressed concern last week about irregularities in advance voting, fraud and intimidation.
Myanmar’s government has denied the Rohingya Muslims citizenship. Suu Kyi has said she plans to form a national reconciliation government with the army and the USDP.
Key to the challenges facing the NLD, he says, is its relationship with the still powerful army, which retains control over pivotal security ministries and a quarter of parliamentary seats.
Under the indirect electoral system, the upper house, lower house, and military bloc in parliament each put forward a presidential candidate. The victor becomes president, the runner-up is first vice president and the third placed becomes number two vice president.
A comfortable majority gives Suu Kyi’s party control of the lower and upper houses, allowing it to elect the president and form the government.
Ms Suu Kyi urged her millions of supporters to be careful not to provoke their rivals as she prepares to take power when parliament resumes in February. The military government refused to acknowledge the results, imprisoned many NLD politicians, forced others into exile, and continued to clamp down on dissent.
Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency by a provision in the current Constitution, but she has said that she will choose a president to serve as her proxy.
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The landslide win now guarantees her party the right to decide who will be the country’s next president. “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”.
