Burma’s military rulers are yet to concede defeat for the ruling, pro-military USDP party, but the army has acknowledged the massive success of the NLD and pledged it will respect the final results. Supporters celebrated there right after the election on Sunday and Monday nights, cheering and dancing as noisy campaign songs blared over loudspeakers.
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Despite her party’s win, the leader of Myanmar’s long-fought democracy movement can’t become president.
Under Myanmar’s complex political system, the NLD will also have to wait until March next year for the transfer of power.
“We look forward to working with you not only to develop closer relations between our parties and ultimately countries, when we also emerge victorious in our quest for democracy but also to concert our efforts in the cause of peace and the brotherhood of all peoples”.
The measure is widely thought to have been brought in by Myanmar’s military strongmen to prevent Suu Kyi becoming president.
Thus, while the make-up of the new parliament will be stocked with Suu Kyi loyalists, the military, which has ruled the former pariah nation since a military coup in 1962, will remain a powerful political force.
The NLD also won convincingly in the last elections that it contested, in 1990, only to have the results annulled by the junta.
Thursday 7:15 p.m.
Suu Kyi’s party was on the verge of victory Thursday with results from Sunday’s parliamentary elections still coming in.
However, Suu Kyi has become increasingly defiant on that “presidential clause” as the scale of her victory has become apparent, making it clear she intends to run the country regardless of whom the NLD elects as president.
“We would like to congratulate [Ms Suu Kyi] for winning the people’s approval”, the country’s current president Thein Sein had said earlier in a statement on Facebook.
“He will have no authority”.
Myanmar’s historic general election was held peacefully on November 8, with 6,038 candidates competing for more than 1,000 parliamentary seats. Only 330 seats were up for election, with 110 – 25 percent – reserved for the military.
Meanwhile, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has booked 104 seats, including 28 in the House of Representatives, 12 in the House of Nationalities, and 62 in the Region or State Parliament. More results are scheduled to be released and Friday.
But human rights groups have warned more recently of a rise in politically motivated arrests, as well as discrimination directed against the Muslim minority, notably the stateless Rohingya population. The army also has an automatic hold of a quarter of seats in parliament.
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Ms Suu Kyi told Radio Free Asia that army chiefs have assured her they “want to be with the people” and distrust will decline following the vote for freedom.
