“Victory!” as the diminutive democracy heroine edged through the crowd. A few will vote for the wrong party. Cheers erupted after every vote announced for the NLD.
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Polls will close in the late afternoon with official results expected to start trickling out by early Monday.
The two major political parties are the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the NLD, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Concerns were also raised by NGOs about the disenfranchisement of up to 80,000 Rohingya residents in Rakhine state.
“Every time I vote, I hope that good will happen in our country”, she said, before departing.
“This is the day that hope ends”, he added.
Thousands are missing from voter lists, millions overseas failed to register in time, and most of the 1.1 million persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority are barred from participating. They believe there can be no last settlement of ethnic complaints under a government dominated by the military, which claims that aggressive counterinsurgency is crucial to maintaining national unity.
Myanmar citizens voted Sunday in a landmark election as the party of veteran democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi seeks a bigger role in the political process.
“I couldn’t sleep the whole night I was so excited”, Ohnmar Win, 38, told AFP. “We don’t expect this place to be flawless”.
But he is optimistic that this time, his vote will matter. The body said ruling party dominance of state media and laws preventing many Muslims in Myanmar from voting have also discredited the vote.
Election officials with no previous polling experience were unsure what they were supposed to be doing and a stamp to validate the ballots didn’t turn up.
Jason Carter, a trustee of the Carter Center, says: “It’s been a remarkable day already”. “We’d have to re-evaluate our approach”, Rhodes said.
“This election is an important one in Myanmar’s ongoing democratic transition”, said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who heads the center.
In the run up to the election, security has been tightened with 40,000 specially trained police deployed to polling stations. “That’s why foreigners might govern our country if she wins this election”, Massachusetts Win May, a villager from Sake Gyi on the outskirts of Yangon, said at Friday’s USDP rally.
“If it’s not clean we will be sad”, he said. And the group had gotten a report from one of its team who was getting ready to get on a boat to go to a remote area inaccessible by auto.
In a reminder of Suu Kyi’s star power, the opposition leader, wearing a traditional skirt with her trademark string of flowers in her hair, was mobbed by scores of reporters as she voted in Yangon. She then walked away without stopping to talk to journalists. At least three other parties are using other birds.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has cast her ballot in Myanmar’s elections.
Supporters chanted “Victory, victory, victory!” as she entered the polling station.
And her party would not be assured of control over the parliament or key levers of power.
While the NLD convincingly won that election, the military junta in charge of the country refused to recognize the result.
Suu Kyi – a national hero who spent almost 15 years under house arrest – is overwhelmingly her country’s most popular politician.
However, many voters are expected to spurn the USDP, created by the former junta and led by former military officers, because it is associated with the brutal dictatorship that installed President Thein Sein’s nominally civilian government in 2011. Several young men helped lift an older man in his wheelchair inside to vote.
Numerous voters in the district, where Suu Kyi lives in a lake-side home, are from affluent families.
“Now I am turning 88, but the country is still at a crossroads”.
“If the election is free and fair, the NLD is going to win the majority of votes”, Aung Zaw, editor of influential Burmese news magazine the Irrawaddy, told CNN.
Polls have opened in Myanmar’s historic elections that are expected to be won by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party.
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In 1990, as now, the military promised to return to the barracks and hand power over to the election winners.
