Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party won a majority in parliament on Friday in the Southeast Asian nation’s historic election, reports Aljazeera.
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After decades of defiance, Myanmar’s indomitable democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi now stands on the cusp of government, an global symbol of resistance in the face of brutal authoritarianism.
The ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party has won just 40 seats so far.
The party of Suu Kyi has won a majority in Myanmar’s parliament, the election commission said on Friday, giving it enough seats to elect the new president.
Instead, Suu Kyi’s party has found itself alone with solving ethnic grievances, potentially dimming hopes of resolving an issue that has long destabilised the country and led to six decades of conflict.
But the comfortable majority gives Suu Kyi’s party control of the lower and upper houses, allowing it to elect the president and form the government.
The big majority affords Suu Kyi, 70, leverage in the political wrangling ahead with a military establishment that has been chastened at the polls but retains sweeping powers.
It will take at least another week to tabulate all the results, a presidential spokesman said.
She has already vowed to govern from “above the president” saying she will circumnavigate the charter ban by appointing a proxy for the top office.
Independence came six months later, when his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, was only 2 years old.
Thein Sein served in the previous military regime, and was named president after the USDP won a 2010 election that was boycotted by the NLD, which considered it unfair. Despite the NLD’s victory, the military will remain highly influential in the country’s politics.
The President commended Aung San Suu Kyi for “her tireless efforts” and sacrifice over so many years to promote a more inclusive, peaceful and democratic Myanmar.
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The extent of the drubbing by the opposition was a major shock given the entrenchment of the military institution, which still allocated one-fourth of the seats in both chambers of parliament. Thousands of NLD supporters gathered outside the party’s headquarters in Yangon, dancing and cheering, as soon as polls closed on Sunday. There is speculation Tin Oo, 89, a former army general and NLD veteran, will be appointed president, but the politically autocratic Suu Kyi has kept her silence on the matter. The elections appear to have been conducted in an orderly manner, there was little if any violence or voter intimidation, there have been no cries of “foul” or accusations of rigging thus far and the sitting government and the military have said that they will honour the result and abide by the will of the people. “The people are different”, Suu Kyi said, describing citizens as “very much more alert to what is going on around them”.
