Myanmar election: President congratulates Suu Kyi

With the tally still being counted, the Election Commission said Friday that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party has won 15 more seats, pushing it over the threshold it needed of 329 seats for a majority in the 664-member, two-house Parliament.

“Citizens have expressed their will in the election”, she said in letters addressed to President Thein Sein, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing as well as influential parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann.

“It shouldn’t be like that … they are trying to be crooked”, she said. The statement, delivered in a Facebook post, appeared to be an official concession of defeat by the president, a former general who has led the military-backed government for the past five years.

In an interview on Tuesday with Singapore’s Channel News Asia television, Suu Kyi reiterated that plan.

He welcomed the comments of independent election observers that the election was “a generally well-run polling process” and called on all parties to work together for a peaceful and orderly transition as the new government is formed.

He was also invited to talks with Suu Kyi despite being sidelined by the USDP and losing his seat in the election.

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. In 1990 the NLD won a convincing victory only for the result to be annulled and Ms Suu Kyi placed under house arrest. Her path to power is blocked by an army-scripted 2008 constitution that bars anyone with foreign children – or husband – from the presidency. The NLD is also far ahead in the upper chamber of parliament, winning 95 of the 116 seats announced so far.

The widespread enthusiasm and excitement that the election results generated, is testimony to the hopes and aspirations of the ordinary Myanmar people that the NLD government will be called upon to meet in due course.

Even with an NLD victory, democracy advocate Suu Kyi can not become president because of a provision in the constitution inserted by the military before it transferred power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011, according to the AP.

“After all the election tasks of Union Election Commission will be completed, we [both sides] will arrange for the talks [offered by the opposition leader]”, he said. The ruling Communist Party hosted Aung San Suu Kyi in June, during which she met with China’s president and party leader, Xi Jinping, in a sign of Beijing’s willingness to adapt to the changing political landscape.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party is headed for a massive win that will give the country a government not beholden to the military for the first time in more than a half-century.

Hasina also said that she is still carrying out her efforts for protecting democracy in Bangladesh.