Suu Kyi’s party secures landslide victory in Myanmar polls

YANGON // Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party attained a historic majority in Myanmar’s parliament on Friday, making it possible for them to form the country’s first civilian government in more than half a century.

While complete results from last Sunday’s elections will take more time to be tallied, the state election commission announced that Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party had won 37 additional seats – pushing it over the threshold of 329 seats needed for a majority in the two-house parliament.

The party is now able to select the next president, who can then name a cabinet and form a new government. The 329 figure represents a majority in the 664-member parliament because voting was not held in seven constituencies due to unrest.

The ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) had won just 40 seats as of Friday afternoon.

The transfer of power should take place after the new parliament meets early next year and votes on a new president, along with two vice presidents.

“We have been ready to form a new government for many years,” said NLD spokesman Nyan Win, greeting the result.

However, the party now faces a variety of challenges, not least of which is the electorate’s high expectations. The NLD’s lack of experience in public administration is another big question mark.

But the victory is a sweet second chance for the party, which also won a landslide victory in the first election it contested in 1990, only to see the results annulled by the military, and many of its leading members harassed and jailed.

Ms Suu Kyi herself was put under house arrest prior to the 1990 election, and spent 15 of the next 22 years mostly confined to her lakeside villa in Yangon. She was under house arrest when she won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and was freed most recently exactly five years ago.

Few expect the army to throw up that kind of roadblock again. It is committed to the economic opportunities of a newly globalised country that encourages foreign trade and investment, and has written provisions into the constitution that guarantee it a leading role in running the country. The military automatically receives 25 per cent of the seats in each house of parliament.

Ms Suu Kyi, 70, is barred from the presidency by the military-scripted constitution, but has already vowed to govern from “above the president” saying she will circumnavigate the charter by backing a proxy to run for the top office.

A major issue for the NLD will be how to deal with the country’s fractious ethnic minorities, who for decades have been conducting on-again, off-again insurgencies seeking greater autonomy. In opposition, the NLD was in a loose alliance with such groups, but in power, it will have to make hard choices about how to balance national, military and minority interests.

Religious and racial tensions involving the country’s ethnic Rohingya minority and other Muslims – a cause of deadly clashes that have left as many as 140,000 people internally displaced – are another challenge, complicated by the nationalist politicking of influential radical Buddhist monks. The issue has ramifications for Myanmar’s international relations as well, as the current government has been accused of inaction and even complicity in what some call genocide of the Rohingya.

In Yangon there were no immediate signs of celebration after Ms Suu Kyi urged restraint from supporters, aware of the threat of a backlash in a country where the army’s writ remains large.

Buoyed by her party’s sweep of the polls, the NLD leader has called for “national reconciliation talks” with president Thein Sein and army chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Both men have congratulated the NLD on its election performance and have vowed to abide by the result as well as help a peaceful transition of power.

The lower house speaker Shwe Mann has also been invited to talks but his political stock appears low after losing his seat and falling out with many senior figures from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.

Mr Thein Sein served in the previous military regime, and was named president after the USDP won a 2010 election that was boycotted by the NLD, who considered it unfair. However, his government met some of the NLD’s demands for changes in the election laws, and the opposition party agreed to run in by-elections in 2012, taking 43 of the 44 seats it contested.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon congratulated Suu Kyi for her election win, but also hailed the “courage and vision” of Mr Thein Sein for “leadership in the reform process”.

* Associated Press, with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse