’I will call the shots in Myanmar’
Activist Suu Kyi’s party heading for resounding win in historic election
MYANMAR democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi made it clear yesterday that she was ready to defy the powerful military’s attempts to clip her wings, as fresh results from Sunday’s historic election showed her party heading for a resounding win.
As vote tallies trickled in, Suu Kyi’s long-oppressed National League for Democracy (NLD) looked set to take control of most regional assemblies as well as forming the central government, a triumph that will reshape the political landscape.
Under the constitution drawn up by Myanmar’s former junta, Suu Kyi is barred by the constitution from taking the presidency because her children are foreign nationals, a clause few doubt was inserted specifically to rule her out.
But in two interviews yesterday, the Nobel peace laureate said that, whoever was appointed president by the newly elected houses of parliament, she would call the shots.
She told the BBC that she would be making all the decisions as the leader of the winning party and Channel News Asia that the next president would have no authority.
The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was created by the junta and is led by retired soldiers, has conceded defeat in a poll that was a milestone on Myanmar’s rocky path from dictatorship to democracy.
The NLD said its tally of results posted at polling stations 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.
The election commission said 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 143 of the 165 seats declared so far for local legislatures and the USDP just 12.
While the USDP has been cut down and much of the establishment shaken by the extent of Suu Kyi’s victory, the army remains a formidable power.
In addition to his bloc of parliament seats, the comman- der-in-chief nominates the heads of three powerful and big-budget ministries – interior, defence and border security – and the constitution gives him the right to take over the government under certain circumstances.
The military has said it will accept the outcome of the election, and Suu Kyi said times had changed since the 1990 election she won in a landslide that the military ignored. She spent years under house arrest following that poll.