Suu Kyi’s party says it won absolute majority in Myanmar elections
Yangon, Nov 11 (efe-epa).- The party led by Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi said Wednesday it had achieved an absolute majority, according to its own data while the official count continues following the elections held Sunday.
The National League for Democracy (LND) announced on social media that it had secured at least 353 seats in the bicameral parliament of the 476, which will allow them to govern alone.
However, the election committee has formally announced the results of fewer than 100 seats while continuing to slowly count the votes.
The entity confirmed the day before that Suu Kyi won in the Kawmhu district, a municipality located 50 kilometers south of Yangon, where she also participated in the 2015 elections.
The leader, whose international image has plummeted for her defense of the military against the accusation of genocide against the Rohingya before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), won 83.83 percent of the votes cast in her constituency.
Despite the NLD winning an absolute majority, as in the 2015 elections, it will run into political constraints imposed by the powerful Myanmar army, which ruled the country with an iron fist for almost half a century.
The military continues to lock 166 – or 25 percent – of parliamentary seats, in accordance with the constitution it drafted, which gives them the right to veto or modify the charter, which also grants them the influential ministries of interior, borders and defense.
Due to armed conflicts in various regions of the country, elections were canceled in 51 constituencies, the vast majority inhabited by ethnic minorities, leaving 22 legislative seats vacant.
Most of these constituencies are in the western Arakan state, the scene for two years of the fierce war between the Armed Forces and the ethno-nationalist guerrilla of the Arakan Army and the only territory where a regional party, the National Arakan Party, has obtained more votes than the NLD. EFE-EPA
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