Myanmar’s ruling party chief concedes defeat

Myanmar’s ruling party conceded defeat in a general election on Monday as the Opposition led by democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on course for a landslide victory that could ensure it forms the next government.

“We lost,” Union Solidarity and Development Party acting chairman Htay Oo told Reuters a day after the Southeast Asian country’s first free nationwide election in a quarter of a century. By late afternoon, vendors outside the headquarters of the National League for Democracy in Yangon were selling red T-shirts with Ms Suu Kyi’s face and the words “We won”.

The election commission later began announcing constituency-by-constitu-ency results from Sunday’s poll. All of the first 12 parliamentary seats annou-nced were won by Ms Suu Kyi’s party. The keenly watched vote was Mya-nmar’s first general election since its long-ruling military ceded power to President Thein Sein’s government in 2011.

The NLD said its own tally of results posted at polling stations around the country showed it was on track to win more than 70 per cent of the seats being contested in Parliament, above the two-thirds threshold it needs to form Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since the early 1960s.

“They must accept the results, even though they don’t want to,” NLD spokesman Win Htein told Reuters, adding that in the highly populated central region the Nobel peace laureate’s party looked set to win more than 90 per cent of seats. Reuters was not able to independently verify the party’s own estimates of its performance.

“We have to find out the reason why we lost,” the subdued USDP leader Htay Oo said, speaking at his family home in the town of Hinthada, in the Irraw-addy Delta. “However, we do accept the results without any reservations. We still don’t know the final results for sure.” He also addressed his own defeat to the NLD in his constituency in the delta region considered the heartland of the USDP’s rural support base.

“I wasn’t expecting it because we were able to do a lot for the people in this region.” he said. “Anyway, it’s the decision of the people.” He attributed Ms Suu Kyi’s wild popularity to her father, independence hero Aung San. Her long period of detention under the former junta also “inflated her popularity”, he said.

Earlier, a smiling Ms Suu Kyi appeared on the balcony of the NLD’s headquarters and in a brief address urged supporters to be patient and wait for the official results. “It is not the time to congratulate our candidates who we think have won the election,” she said from the balcony of her party’s Yangon headquarters. But “people have an idea of the result even if I don’t say it,” she added.

But although the election appears to have dealt a decisive defeat to the USDP, a period of uncertainty still looms over the country because it is not clear how Ms Suu Kyi will share power easily with the still-dominant military. The military-drafted Con-stitution guarantees one-quarter of Parliament’s seats to unelected members of the armed forces and allows the commander-in-chief to nominate the head of three powerful ministries, interior, defe-nce and border security.