Another victory for de facto Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi is looming in the parliamentary elections in Myanmar. According to initial results from the city of Yangon, for example, the 75-year-old party was in the lead yesterday evening, as the newspaper „Myanmar Times“ reported.
However, the great lead that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate with her National League for Democracy (NLD) party gained in the 2015 election is expected to shrink. When the exact result will be announced is not clear. According to the authorities, it may be days before the official final result is announced.
Hundreds of thousands couldn’t vote
Human Rights Watch spoke of an election with „fundamental flaws“. The electoral commission had decided that in several conflict regions dominated by ethnic minorities, due to security concerns, voting was not allowed at all.
Human rights activists complained that 1.5 million people were excluded from the vote. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remaining in Myanmar could not participate – their citizenship was revoked in 1982.
High voter turnout
According to media reports, voter turnout was very high despite the coronavirus pandemic. The government had rejected requests to postpone the vote. More than 90 parties took part in the election, and electoral votes were also held at the regional level. A quarter of the 664 seats in the parliamentary chambers are reserved for the military.
Suu Kyi is now controversial internationally. For one thing, the promised democratic reforms have largely failed to materialize, and the 75-year-old is now showing a more authoritarian style of government herself. On the other hand, she is pilloried because of her silence on the Rohingya crisis. More than a million Rohingya have fled military violence to Bangladesh.
