“We lost,” Acting Chairman Htay Oo of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) told Reuters on Monday.
Official election result won’t be made until all election returns are officially tallied but initial election turnouts show Suu Kyi’s NLD was leading the count with 49 of the first 54 seats declared for the lower house voting for the NLD. At least 330 seats are being contested in the lower house.
“I’m very happy about the result,” said Hnin Si, 60, a trader in Yangon. “The people have suffered for 50 years. I believe Aung San Suu Kyi will make the country a better place.”
Suu Kyi needs to get at least two thirds of the vote to gain majority control of the parliament and form a new government.
While Suu Kyi could claim victory and even majority control of the parliament, there is a law constituted by the transition government that bans a winning candidate with foreign children from the presidency.
Suu Kyi was married to a foreigner and has two children who are British citizens.
In an interview with BBC,Suu Kyi shared her observation about voter’s behavior in the last two elections, saying they are more politicized now that they were in 2012.
“The times are different, the people are different. I find the people are far more politicised now than they were back, not just in 1990, but much more politicised than they were in 2012, when we campaigned for the by-election, and very much more alert to what it going on around them,” she said.
“And then of course the communications revolution, which has made a huge difference; everybody gets on to the net and informs everybody else of what is happening,” she noted.
“And so it’s much more difficult for those who wish to engage in irregularities to get away with it,” said the popular NLD leader.
The polls were not fair but had been “largely free” though there were “areas of intimidation,” Suu Kyi told BBC News in a post election interview.
Suu Kyi swept her National League for Democracy ( NLD) party to victory in an election held two decades ago but the military regime did not allow her to take her post as the nation’s Prime Minister. Instead, she was put on house arrest for most of the past 20 years since winning the election by landslide.
In the by-elections in 2012, Suu Kyi was elected to the parliament and has since rallied the people to continue the democratic reforms initiated by her NLD party.
