Fresh results from Myanmar’s election on Tuesday showed the opposition taking control of most regional assemblies as well as forming the next government, handing democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi sweeping powers and reshaping the political landscape. The ruling party, which was created by the country’s former junta and is led by retired military officers, on Monday conceded defeat in an election that was a major milestone on Myanmar’s rocky path from dictatorship to democracy. But results dribbled out by the election commission have shown that their Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) was not just beaten in the polls, it was trounced. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) said its own tally of results posted at polling stations around the country showed it was on track to take more than two-thirds of seats that were contested in parliament, enough to form Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since the early 1960s.
NLD spokesman Win Htein said on Tuesday the party would win more than 250 of the 330 seats not occupied by the military in the lower house of parliament. Under the constitution drawn up by the former junta, a quarter of the parliamentary seats are unelected and reserved for the armed forces. Reuters was not able to independently verify the party’s own estimates of its performance.
The election commission said on Tuesday the NLD had won 78 of the 88 seats declared so far for the 440-strong lower house. No seats have been declared in the upper house.
Official results also showed that Sunday’s election had handed the NLD a landslide win in the battle for regional assemblies, with Suu Kyi’s party winning 97 of the 107 seats declared so far for local legislatures and the USDP just three.
Read More Myanmar’s Suu Kyi set for sweeping power as election wins mount | Reuters.