YANGON, Burma/Myanmar—The party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi claimed victory Monday in virtually every seat in four states where results of Burma’s historic parliamentary election were known, signaling a sweep that could give it the presidency and further loosen the military’s stranglehold.
The announcement at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy set off a new round of jubilation among the party’s red-shirted supporters, who already had been celebrating the result of Sunday’s vote.
The NLD said it had won 44 of the 45 lower house seats and all 12 of the upper house seats from the party stronghold of Yangon, Burma’s biggest city. It also won all 38 seats in Ayeyarwaddy state, all but one of the 40 in Bago, and 11 out of 19 lower house seats and all 10 upper house seats in Mon state. The trend was expected to continue in Burma’s remaining 10 states.
Even without official results, it was clear that the Union Solidarity Development Party was facing a rout. The party is made up former junta members who ruled the Southeast Asian country for a half-century and as a quasi-civilian government since 2011. Many of its leaders conceded personal defeats in their races.
Although the government’s Union Election Commission did not announce the outcome of the Yangon races, the NLD has stationed representatives at counting centers and kept its own tallies. The election commission has been slow in releasing the numbers.
The United States congratulated Burma on the election but noted that more work remains ahead on the country’s road to democracy.
Aung Kyaw Kyaw, a 29-year-old pharmacist, said he didn’t vote for the ruling party because “they were only former military people. If I voted for them, that means I am asking my own enemy to come back into my life.”
Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy icon, had urged supporters earlier in the day not to provoke losing rivals who mostly represent the former junta in the country also known as Burma.
Hours before the Yangon announcement, party spokesman Win Htein said the NLD had secured about 70 percent of the vote counted by midday. Another spokesman, Nyan Win, put the number at 90 percent.
“We will win a landslide,” Nyan Win told The Associated Press.
If those figures are confirmed by official results, it would mean that Suu Kyi’s party would not only dominate Parliament, but could also secure the presidency despite handicaps built into the constitution.
“I want Mother Suu to win in this election,” said street vendor Ma Khine, using a widely used affectionate term for the 70-year-old party leader. “She has the skill to lead the country. I respect her so much. I love her. She will change our country in a very good way.”
The NLD has been widely expected to finish with the most seats in Parliament. A two-thirds majority would give it control over the executive posts under Burma’s complicated parliamentary-presidency system, which reserves a quarter of the 664 seats for the military.
