Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy is on track for a repeat of its 1990 landslide election victory with results from more than 20 percent of all seats officially declared.
A further batch of results released by the Union Election Commission at 3.00pm showed that with 21.5pc of seats declared – including those for state and regional assemblies – the NLD had won 220 out of 252. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party was on 17, while five ethnic minority parties totalled 15 seats between them.
“The times have changed, the people have changed," Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD leader who spent 15 years under house arrest, told the BBC in her first interview since the November 8 vote.
She said the elections had been “largely free”, a view endorsed by domestic and foreign observers.
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, head of the EU observers mission, told reporters that voters had “turned out in large numbers and calmly cast their votes in a generally, well-run process”.
In the crucial contest for control of the national parliament, known as the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the NLD has so far taken 78 out of 88 seats declared in the lower house, the Pyithu Hluttaw, which has a total of 330 elected seats. Seven will not be filled because the election was cancelled in those areas.
NLD senior member and party spokesperson U Win Htein told The Myanmar Times that the NLD believed it had won 82pc of townships across the country.
Taking into account the 25pc of unelected parliamentary seats allocated to the military, the NLD is on track to have a comfortable absolute majority that would secure its candidates for president and one of the two vice president positions. The military bloc is assured of having the other vice president position.
The combined houses of parliament will vote in February 2016 for a new president, who then appoints a government.
The 70-year-old NLD leader is barred by the constitution from the top post because her sons hold foreign passports. Last week she told a press conference that she would be “above” the president. To the BBC she said she would make the big decisions while a colleague holds the post, joking: "A rose by another name."
Expectations are growing that the military will stick to its word and not reject the NLD landslide as it did in 1990, then accompanied by a brutal crackdown.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing declared on November 8, not for the first time, that the military would respect the “people’s choice”. He cautioned that it was important to accept the results announced by the UEC.
While concerns remain that the military will still attempt to manipulate some results, not even its harshest critics believe a re-run of 1990 is on the cards.
In part this is because the Tatmadaw has built firewalls in the 2008 constitution to defend itself, including a 25pc bloc in parliament that can veto constitutional change and control of three key ministries not answerable to the president. It also exerts significant control over the civil service and boasts an enormous business empire.
Still, the scale of the result has stunned many – not least U Wirathu, an outspoken monk in Mandalay who tried but failed to mobilise a wave of nationalist and Buddhist sentiment against the NLD because of its opposition to four laws to “protect race and religion” that discriminated against women and minorities.
“I never thought that the NLD would win this many townships,” he told The Myanmar Times at the Masoeyin Monastery in Mandalay. “I expected many parties to enter into the hluttaw. I am very surprised.” He also said he was worried.
Drama in the capital also left former defence minister U Wai Lwin stunned. The ex-general and USDP candidate had sought a partial recount of votes in Pobbathiri where he was up against U Ye Mon, a poet better known as Maung Tin Thit. But township election commission officials turned down the request.
Despite the avalanche of good news and votes in their party’s favour, NLD officials were still expressing frustration and concerns at the slow release of officially sanctioned results by the UEC.
The UEC, headed by ex-general U Tin Aye, says it is working with full transparency and is releasing results at regular intervals.
At a tense press conference held at UEC headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw on Monday, UEC official U Myint Naing was asked for a timeframe for results. “As soon as possible,” came the reply.
At a tense press conference held at UEC headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw on Monday, UEC official U Myint Naing was asked for a timeframe for results. “As soon as possible,” came the reply.
"It mainly depends on … how fast they can count,” he added, referring to township and district level sub-commissions.
“We will announce in a timely manner as their counting finishes," he said, denying that the UEC had instructed townships not to release official results.
Damaso Magbual, head of the observer mission of the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), accepted the UEC’s explanation of slow counting.
“The communication of results is being postponed because the counting is done manually. In certain countries, the manual count has taken a week. ANFREL has discussed this issue today together with the EU observation missions and several ambassadors. We all think that the time it currently takes for the count is within what can be expected,” he said on Monday.
“We are aware that township officials are being told to send the results directly to the UEC in Nay Pyi Taw instead of sending them to the district level. There has been a protest by the NLD because of that. However, we do not think that this issue is of importance to the validity of the election process,” he added.
Political analyst U Than Soe Naing believes the UEC was simply buying time. “Such kinds of things usually happen in our country. It is not abnormal,” he said.
He also believes the NLD will avoid the mistakes apparently committed by party “hardliners” after its landslide win in 1990, which followed hard on the heels of the 1988 military crackdown.
After that victory, some senior party members were controversially reported to have said that military leaders would be sent to international courts for alleged crimes they committed. The remarks were not confirmed by the party but they are believed to have contributed to the junta’s decision to reject the results and arrest the NLD leadership.
“So far I see no such hardliners in the NLD party now,” U Than Soe Naing added.
From: Myanmar Times