Confident of having secured a landslide victory, the opposition National League for Democracy is being frustrated by the slow release of officially sanctioned results by the Union Election Commission.
NLD supporters watch as results are announced last night at the party’s Yangon headquarters. (Aung Khant/The Myanmar Times)
The UEC, headed by ex-general U Tin Aye, says it is working with full transparency and yesterday promised that results would be released at three-hourly intervals throughout the day. But by last night it had only confirmed outcomes in 28 out of 330 townships.
At a tense press conference held at UEC headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw, 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.
NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spoke yesterday morning for the first time since voting on November 8. She did not declare victory but told supporters that Myanmar needed humble winners and good losers. She congratulated people for their “political awakening” and said they had a good idea of what the outcome would be even though they would have to wait for the official results.
But any sense of patience had disappeared last night when the NLD headquarters in Yangon was announcing its own version of results, claiming sweeping wins in Bago Region and Mon State, following hefty wins in Mandalay. Social media rapidly broadcast the message as crowds gathered expectantly outside the NLD office.
NLD officials reiterated that the party was on track to take 70 percent of elected seats in parliament. This would be enough to form an absolute majority taking into account the 25pc of seats allocated to the military, and ensure the party’s nomination by parliament of the next president in February 2016.
Despite the NLD claim, very few results have come in from some ethnic minority regions of the country, particularly Shan and Kachin states. In Rakhine State, the Arakan National Party was claiming a large number of wins.
A statement made on election day by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing that the military would respect the “people’s choice” was starting to sound less reassuring yesterday, although not even the harshest critics of the Tatmadaw believe a re-run of the rejection of the NLD landslide in 1990 is on the cards.
However, doubts were sown by reports that the UEC on the night of November 8 instructed townships to communicate results directly to the UEC in Nay Pyi Taw, as disclosed to The Myanmar Times by election officials in Taunggyi in Shan State. The NLD issued a formal complaint over the issue.
The instruction, which may not have been widely followed, appears to contradict instructions explained by U Tin Aye on November 4 when he said votes counted at polling stations would be tallied at township and district sub-commissions, then “scrutinised” at the regional or state level before going to UEC’s “election results scrutinising committee”.
Some foreign observers saw the apparent change in procedure as an effort by the UEC to regain control over the release of information, rather than a ploy to manipulate results. One Western observer suggested instead that “classic bureaucratic form-filling” was behind the delays.
Damaso Magbual, head of the observer mission of the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), appeared to accept 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 yesterday.
“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.
Although the UEC’s U Myint Naing said official results depended on the speed of townships, The Myanmar Times had just visited five township commissions in Nay Pyi Taw and found no counting under way. Some offices were even closed.
NLD candidates are claiming that they have won in at least four of the capital’s eight townships – Zabuthiri, Dekkhinathiri, Pobbathiri and Pyinmana. They conceded defeat in Ze-yathiri where ex-general U Hla Htay Win won with military votes from around 20,000 out of 73,060 eligible voters based in about 20 military camps.
U Ye Mon, who is also well known as Maung Tin Thit, believes he has won with over 18,000 votes against former defence minister U Wai Lwin who is about 1000 votes behind.
“Pobbathiri is the most difficult battle-ground because of more than 7000 military votes. However, fortunately I got over 100 votes from the military and finally I will be the winner,” U Ye Mon said with confidence, although there has been no official pronouncement by the UEC.
“Everything I saw is free and fair,” U Wai Lwin told The Myanmar Timesyesterday afternoon, refusing to comment on the unofficial results. “Just now I don’t want to say whether I’ve won or lost. I’m looking forward to the UEC announcement.”
A reporter from The Myanmar Times later visited USDP headquarters and heard sources say U Wai Lwin would likely turn out the winner.
In Dekkhinathiri, NLD candidate U Thant Zin Tun was also confident of victory, saying he had won in 13 out of 15 polling stations. However, he recounted problems in the tallying process at the township level, saying there were restrictions on the numbers of observers from parties and that an administrative official was in charge instead of an election officer.
But he said he believed the UEC would announce the “true” result even if it delayed.
Local political commentator U Yan Myo Thein expressed concern over the delays by the UEC, saying it was a bad sign for the country if they were trying to ensure the USDP ended up with enough seats in parliament to combine with the military’s allocated 25pc to create a majority.
Political analyst U Than Soe Naing believes the UEC was simply using delay tactics. “Such kinds of things usually happen in our country. It is not abnormal,” he said.
The UEC’s attempts to centralise the announcement of results would be a weak mechanism for cheating, he added.
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.