Naypyitaw (Myanmar): Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party has won 77% of seats in Myanmar’s landmark polls this month, according to final results released by the election commission. Myanmar voted on November 8 but results took days to arrive in the capital from remote corners of the country, wending their way from villages in dense jungle and townships in several regions beset by active conflict.
Election workers carried ballots by foot from some mountainous areas and then loaded them into helicopters that were used to transport the sealed boxes to the capital Naypyitaw where the official Union Election Commission would count them.
So cut-off are some villages in northern Myanmar that their inhabitants have more contact with their Chinese neighbours than with the central government. Five days after the polls and Suu Kyi’s party had won a majority in parliament, ending half a century of dominance by the military. But votes from 11 constituencies in the northern Kachin State were only counted late last week, finally allowing the commission to announce the results for all 1,150 contested seats.
The NLD won 887 seats, or 77.1%, providing Suu Kyi with a majority in both houses of parliament. The military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party won only 117 or 10% of the seats and the army reserves a quarter of all seats in parliament.
Although Aung San Suu Kyi is banned from the presidency under an army-drafted constitution, her party will now be able to push through legislation, form a government and handpick a president. Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest, has said that a triumph for the NLD would place her “above the president”.
The new members of parliament will not take their seats until February. They will then appoint a president. Suu Kyi has not signalled who she will choose as her president, although it is likely to be a loyal ally. The 70-year-old leader has invited the army chief and current President Thein Sein to discuss a national reconciliation government she wants to form. Last week, she met with Myanmar’s influential parliamentary speaker and former general Shwe Mann.
There are concerns over a smooth change of leadership in the next few months. In 1990, the NLD also won an election but the generals annulled the result, imprisoned her colleagues and placed her under house arrest. But the military and its allies in government have repeatedly and publicly stated they will abide the results.
An opinion article in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Monday reiterated that sentiment and even criticised military supremacy in government, a huge shift in tone for a country ruled since the 1960s by army generals.
“The idea that a country can be united through its military might is a false one,” it said. “Military might alone cannot unite people and may even lead to war and bloodshed. It is time for Myanmar to exert efforts for genuine national reconciliation.”
