Burma election: Aung San Suu Kyi demands military respect the 'people’s will' and recognise her party’s triumph

Her mandate to rule seemingly unassailable, Aung San Suu Kyi has demanded Burma’s all-powerful military respect the “people’s will” after her party’s crushing election victory.

Describing the weekend’s elections as not entirely free but “largely fair”, Ms Suu Kyi told the BBC that the former ruling junta – which ignored the results of the last elections in 1990, which saw her become the world’s most famous political prisoner – must respect the result, which she said would see her National League for Democracy (NLD) win 75 per cent of the vote, more than the two-thirds required to secure a majority.

Ms Suu Kyi said that she would be “making all the decisions as the leader of the winning party” and told Channel News Asia that the next president would have “no authority”. Under the constitution drawn up by Burma’s former junta, Ms Suu Kyi is barred by the constitution from taking the presidency because her children are foreign nationals, a clause few doubt was inserted specifically to rule her out.

Asked about the presidency in the BBC interview, Ms Suu Kyi said: “It’s a name only. A rose by any other name.”

The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was created by the junta and is led by retired soldiers, has conceded defeat in a poll that was a milestone on Burma’s rocky path from dictatorship to democracy.

The NLD party would win more than 250 of the 330 seats not occupied by the military in the lower house, NLD spokesman Win Htein predicted. Under the junta-crafted constitution, a quarter of the seats are unelected and reserved for the armed forces. The election commission said the NLD had won 78 of the 88 seats declared so far for the 440-strong lower house. The USDP had won five.

In the first results for the upper house declared on Tuesday, the NLD won 29 of 33 seats while the USDP won two. Results for the regional assemblies also showed the NLD well ahead. “The difference between the parties is huge. It’s a clear win,” said Sitida, a 37-year-old Buddhist monk in the central city of Mandalay who marched in the country’s 2007 “Saffron Revolution” protests that were crushed by the junta.

Sitida, who was sentenced to 70 years in prison for his role in the demonstrations but was given amnesty as part of political reforms in 2011, said the military would now have to accept the NLD’s win and negotiate an orderly retreat from politics.

While the USDP has been cut down and much of the establishment shaken by the extent of Ms Suu Kyi’s victory, the army remains formidable. In addition to his bloc of parliament seats, the commander-in-chief nominates the heads of three powerful ministries – interior, defence and border security – and the constitution gives him the right to take over the government under certain circumstances.

The military has said it will accept the outcome of the vote, and Ms Suu Kyi said times have changed since the 1990 election she won. She spent years under house arrest after that. “I find that the people are far more politicised now than they were... so it’s much more difficult for those who wish to engage in irregularities to get away with it,” she told the BBC.

Still, analysts say a period of uncertainty may be looming as it is not clear if Ms Suu Kyi and the generals can share power.

Sunday’s vote was the first general election since the military ceded power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011, ushering in reforms and opening up to foreign investors.

Reuters