Suu Kyi’s day of destiny arrives
> Voting starts in Myanmar’s first free election in 25 years
YANGON: Myanmar voters cast their ballots yesterday in a historic election that could thrust Aung San Suu Kyi’s prodemocracy party into power and finally pull the country away from the junta’s grip.
In a reminder of Suu Kyi’s star power, the opposition leader was mobbed by scores of reporters as she voted in Yangon.
Supporters crushed into the school yard acting as a polling station, shouting “Victory! Victory!” as the democracy heroine edged through the crowd.
Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party believes a fair vote will power it into government.
It is the first election the NLD has contested since 1990, when the party claimed a landslide only to see the army ignore the result and condemn Suu Kyi to spend most of the next 20 years under house arrest.
The 70-year-old is not allowed to be president by the army-scripted constitution a charter that blocks anyone with foreign children from top office – Suu Kyi’s two sons are British.
But she declared yesterday an NLD win would see her take a position “above the president” – a challenge to the army which has spent 25 years trying to hamper her political ascent.
In Naypyidaw, President Thein Sein, a one-time top junta general, smiled for the cameras and held up his little finger, stained with purple ink, after voting.
His ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, an army-backed behemoth stacked with former soldiers, is the main obstacle to a NLD victory.
Many voters remain nervous about how the powerful army will react if it loses with concerns over fraud which riddled previous elections.
But after casting his vote in the capital, the army chief said his troops would respect the voice of the electorate.
“Just as the winner accepts the result, so should the loser,” he told reporters.
Across the country queues of people, many wearing traditional longyi sarongs, snaked outside polling stations.
At Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu, where she travelled after casting her ballot, crowds smiled and waved, jostling for space in between the media scrum.
“I was very excited and so worried that I might do something wrong that my hands were shaking,” fish-seller Kay Khine Soe said of the moment she cast her vote.
“I thought if I made a mistake my vote could be lost.” – AFP