Decisive victory
April 2, 2012
Preliminary results from Myanmar's weekend by-election indicated on Monday that Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) had scored a decisive victory.
The NLD reportedly won all of the 44 seats it contested in the election, with a total of 45 seats up for grabs in the ballot. Suu Kyi, meanwhile, secured over 90 percent of the vote in the Kawhmu constituency, according to NLD official Soe Win. The official results were expected within a week.
A European Union official invited to monitor the vote hailed "very encouraging signs" at the roughly dozen polling stations her team visited.
"However, that's definitely not enough to assume that it is indicative of how the process was conducted in other parts of the country and certainly not enough to talk about credibility of elections," Malgorzata Wasilewska said.
The NLD complained of election irregularities, claiming that wax had been put over the check box for the party on ballots, which could be rubbed off later to change the vote. In the run-up to the election, the party reported the intimidation of candidates, and Suu Kyi said the poll could not be considered a "genuinely free and fair election."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Istanbul for a meeting of the "Friends of Syria Contact Group," said Washington was committed to supporting the nascent democratic reforms in isolated Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"While the results have not yet been announced, the United States congratulates the people who participated, many for their first time in the campaign and election process," Clinton said.
Small foothold
The NLD's few dozen seats, however, are a fraction of those held by the military-backed, ostensibly civilian government. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) still occupies most of the seats in the 664 member parliament.
Myanmar's long-ruling military junta handed over power to the USDP after the party won the 2010 elections, which were plagued by accusations of fraud and the exclusion of Suu Kyi from the contest. Although the party is backed by the military, the government of President Thein Sein - himself a former general - has implemented a series of unexpected reforms.
Sein's administration has released political prisoners such as Suu Kyi and signed truces with rebel groups in a bid to convince Western nations to ease sanctions against his country.
"The pace of change has been breathtaking," Robert Cooper, a counselor to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, told the news agency Reuters.
The weekend's by-election was precipitated by 45 legislators vacating their seats to enter the government. The next general election is scheduled for 2015.
slk/gsw (Reuters, AFP, dpa)