Naypyidaw (Myanmar): The Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD) has secured an absolute majority in the parliament in Myanmar.
Official results posted by the Union Election Commission at noon on Friday showed that with nearly 85 percent of all seats declared from the November 8 elections for the national, state and regional parliaments, the NLD had so far secured 238 seats in the Union lower house and 110 seats in the upper house.
Even taking into account the 25 percent of unelected seats in both houses allocated to the military, the NLD has won an absolute majority following its crushing defeat of President U Thein Sein’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The USDP, by noon, had secured 28 seats in the lower house, and 12 in the upper house, reports the Myanmar Times.
Various ethnic parties between them totaled 31 seats in the lower house and 10 seats in the upper house.
The landslide win now guarantees her party the right to decide who will be the country’s next president. Suu Kyi is already on record as saying that as the leader of the NLD she will be “above the president”.
Final results may not be known for several more days, after which the president and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander in chief, have agreed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi to discuss the transition period leading up to parliament’s election of the next president in February.
Under Myanmar’s quasi-presidential system set up by the former military junta, the president names his or her government but will have to share power with the military which remains beyond executive authority and will control the key ministers of defence, interior and border affairs.
The new parliament will convene in late January, 2016, and first choose a Speaker.
In early February the lower house and upper house vote to select one candidate each for president, while the military bloc also names a candidate.
The combined houses then form an electoral college to vote on the three candidates. The winner becomes president, the runner-up is first vice president and the third placed becomes number two vice president.
Aung San Suu Kyi is not eligible for the presidency under the 2008 constitution because her sons are foreign nationals. However she made clear she will run the government – which she says will promote “national reconciliation”. (ANI)