The Union Election Commission yesterday announced 63 more results for Parliament’s lower house, which included Ms Suu Kyi’s name as the victor from Kawhmu, which is part of Yangon state.
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The Union Solidarity Development Party or USDP, which enjoys the support of the military, has been in power in the country since 2001 when a transition from military rule to civilian rule started.
The election commission has released results of about two-thirds of the parliamentary seats being contested.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party on Wednesday said that Burma’s president has congratulated it on a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections, the Myanmar Times reported.
Suu Kyi has said that a civilian from the party will be up for the post shall the NLD win, although she has indicated she will lead the government from Parliament.
US President Barack Obama called incumbent President Thein Sein to congratulate him for holding a successful and peaceful election last weekend, Information Minister Ye Htut said.
“It is crucial for the dignity of the nation that the people’s will, which was shown in the election of November 8, be truly implemented in a peaceful and stable manner”, she wrote in the letter, which was dated Tuesday. Although she leads the NLD she is barred by the constitution from being president.
More than 30 million people cast votes in Sunday’s election, which global observers mostly praised as successful, while raising concerns over the disenfranchisement of Muslims and other minorities and about the lack of transparency on the counting of advance ballots.
While her letters seek conciliation, Suu Kyi has become increasingly defiant on the presidential clause as the scale of her victory has become apparent.
In a message to the NLD, Burma’s president Thein Sein offered congratulations for “leading the race for parliamentary seats”.
It is this lengthy and patient opposition experience, she says, which the party will draw on in government.
Although poll officials are yet to announce the NLD as winners, Myanmar’s balance of power, dominated for half a century by the army and its allies, appears set to be redrawn.
“[Myanmar’s armed forces] will do what is best in cooperation with the new government during the post-election period”, said senior Myanmar army General Min Aung Hlaing in a Facebook statement. For one, the constitution stipulates that no one with foreign children can be President, effectively ruling out Suu Kyi who has two.
Suu Kyi, however, has vowed to rule from “above the president”, indicating she will use a proxy to sidestep the bar on her reaching top office.
But ahead of elections she struck a defiant note, saying she would take a position “above the president” in the event of an NLD win.
Of the 394 representatives, 149 are elected to the Lower House, 33 to the House of Nationalities (Upper House), and 212 to the Region or State Parliament.
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All 664 lawmakers from both houses will then vote on the president.
