Suu Kyi’s party claims victory at polls
YANGON, Myanmar — The ruling National League for Democracy party led by Aung San Suu Kyi said Monday that it won enough seats in Parliament to hold a majority and retain power.
Party leaders made the claim even though the state Union Election Commission has not yet released full results from Sunday’s vote.
“I can now confirm that we’re now securing more than 322 seats,” said Monywa Aung Shin, a spokesperson for the NLD. There are 642 seats in Parliament. “We were aiming to secure 377 seats in total. But it would be likely more than that.”
The Union Election Commission earlier said it might take as long as a week to release full results. By 8 p. m. Monday, it had announced the names of just nine candidates who had won seats in Parliament, all belonging to the NLD.
A victory by the NLD had been widely expected, though it had been speculated that its deterioration of relations with ethnic minoritybased parties, with whom it had cooperated in the last election in 2015, might reduce its totals.
Much of the NLD’s appeal is based on the popularity of its leader, Suu Kyi, who became the head of government with the title of state counselor after the 2015 polls.
Her administration’s record has been mixed at best, with economic growth falling short of expectations and no end to the decadesold armed strife with ethnic minorities seeking greater autonomy.
But among her countrymen she has managed to retain the appeal she built up during decades of fighting for democracy against the military dictatorships that preceded her.
Outside of Myanmar, her reputation sank in response to her failure to defend the human rights of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. Her foreign supporters were shocked that she did nothing about the brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign of Myanmar’s army that forced about 740,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to neighboring Bangladesh.
More than 90 parties contested the election and 37 million people were eligible to cast ballots, including 5 million firsttime voters.