Myanmar’s president Thein Sein pledges peaceful power shift

Myanmar’s Union Election Commission said that Suu Kyi had won her rural constituency seat of Kawhmu with 54,676 votes, as election results trickle in from across the country.

Suu Kyi’s party was on the verge of victory Thursday with results from Sunday’s parliamentary elections still coming in.

This was the first election in Myanmar, formally known as Burma, since the military junta established a quasi-civilian government in 2011, after almost 50 years in power, and one year after Aung San Suu Kyi’s two-decade long house detention ended and a ban on her NLD party was lifted.

The NLD has swept up 256 seats, just over 70 short of an outright majority.

But stronger complaints about irregularities are emerging from the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was decimated in the election, with many of its ministers and top officials thrown out of their seats, including powerful generals.

The results on hundreds more seats have yet to come in.

Suu Kyi plans to discuss the results of the election with them and will push for a “national reconciliation” with the country’s military elite.

They have pledged to respect the people’s vote and work with the new government, alleviating concerns of a repeat of the last elections in 1990 when the military ignored the NLD’s victory.

Parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann, who lost his seat in the election, has agreed to meet Ms Suu Kyi within a week. He said the government and the military will respect the results of the “free and fair elections”.

The NLD said in a statement Wednesday that presidential spokesperson Ye Htut had approached the party on behalf of Thein Sein.

NLD senior member and party spokesperson U Win Htein told The Myanmar Times that the NLD believed that it had won 82 percent of townships across the country.

The country has been under military control for half a century.

Thein Sein, a former army general, also congratulated the 70-year-old Noble laureate in a letter, saying the government will pursue a transfer of power “in accordance within the legislated timeframe”. She also invited the leader of the army to join the talks, but he has apparently not responded yet.

People gather to buy merchandise with pictures of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at a shop run by her National League of Democracy party in Yangon, Myanmar, Tuesday, November 10, 2015.

Her sons are British as was her late husband – who died in Britain while she was under house arrest in Myanmar.

The trend so far may allow her to get a majority in the 440-seat lower house despite the military’s right to fill 110 seats – 25 percent. The NLD won 78 of the 88 seats announced by the election commission in the lower house, which has 440 seats.

However, the opposition leader said she can still make major decisions of the party even if another person served as president.