Military concedes, says it will respect ‘the people’s decision’
MUMBAI, India — Burma’s military signaled Wednesday that it would accept its crushing election defeat, congratulating Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party for leading in parliamentary polls and saying it would participate in talks next week on “national reconciliation.”
The statement by the military appeared to be an acknowledgment of defeat as initial results continue to show Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party with a sizable advantage in parliament in Sunday’s elections. The NLD party says it won 70 percent of votes, but election officials are releasing certified results slowly.
“We would like to congratulate the National League for Democracy because it is leading in the election results,” a military statement said, adding that it would “respect and follow the people’s decision.”
Although observers expected the NLD to win the elections, there were widespread questions about whether the army, which has led Burma, also known as Myanmar, for the past five decades, would accept the result. In 1990, the NLD swept a parliamentary vote only to see the military ignore the result and keep Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, under house arrest.
Official results as of Wednesday night showed the NLD had won 256 parliamentary seats, compared with just 21 for the military-aligned governing party that has led the country for the past five years.
In parliament, 498 seats were being contested, and the NLD needs to win three-quarters to hold an absolute majority in the legislature, which includes a number of seats reserved for the army.
With returns showing the NLD was likely to reach that threshold, Suu Kyi was poised to hold a position of significant power within a government dominated by the military. The parliament will select the next president, although Suu Kyi is ineligible because the military written Constitution bars anyone with close foreign relatives from holding that post. Her late husband and two adult children are British.
Suu Kyi has vowed to run the government from the sidelines, if necessary, and on Tuesday, she called for talks between her party, President Thein Sein of the pro-military ruling party and parliamentary Speaker Shwe Mann. The military said it would join the talks next week.