Myanmar: Suu Kyi's party claims landslide election win

YANGON, Myanmar

Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi’s party says it has secured a landslide victory in Sunday's elections.

The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party claimed it has so far won 392 seats in the 642-member national legislature.

“We tallied the results from candidates, and we won more than enough seats that secures our government in office for five more years,” said NLD spokesman Aung Shin.

“So we win the elections by a landslide,” he told Anadolu Agency over phone on Tuesday.

The results, that he referred, were based on the party’s tallies as the Union Election Commission continues counting ballots in some areas.

The commission is expected to announce the official results at a news conference scheduled on Wednesday.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has been criticized for turning a blind eye to the genocide of the Rohingya minority in the country's western Rakhine state by the military.

Meanwhile, newly-formed political parties and Buddhist nationalist parties were dealt a crushing defeat.

The People Pioneer Party (PPP), found in 2019 by a prominent businesswoman and former NLD lawmaker, Thet Thet Khine, contested the elections with 240 candidates across the country. The party won no seats.

The People Party, led by Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent leader of the country’s uprising in 1988, registered 140 candidates, but won no seat.

Kyaw Zeya, vice chairman of PPP, said he is satisfied with the election results despite the defeat.

“We noticed that our candidates stand third after two main parties in each vote count. So we have potential. For a one-year old party, I say it is the best we can expect,” he told Anadolu Agency over phone on Tuesday.

National Development Party (NDP) -- supported by Buddhist nationalists -- also did not win a single seat despite filing 350 candidates.

The party was supported by nationalist monks including Wirathu who was once called by Time magazine as Buddhist Bin Laden, in reference to the slain Al-Qaeda leader.

Wirathu, who has been on the run for more than one year, turned himself in to police last week.

Before he was taken to a prison in Yangon, he urged his supporters to vote for NDP or the parties that would work for protecting race and religion in the country.