By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Senior officials in Myanmar’s opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) were confident Monday of victory in the country's historic general election, with unofficial results suggesting huge gains for the party.
Spokesperson Win Htein claimed the NLD had won 70 percent of the votes counted so far, though the official result will not be known until much later.
Crowds outside party headquarters in Yangon cheered and applauded as a large screen showed that NLD candidates had won all but one of the first cluster of seats announced.
They also jeered and booed as the name of the lone Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) winner was read out.
"We have strength now," Htein Lynn Aung, a 36-year-old NLD supporter who said he had voted for the first time in his life yesterday, told Anadolu Agency. "We don't need to be afraid."
As a heavy rain shower fell, jubilant supporters chanted "NLD" and pumped their fists in the air while others held up large, soaking wet flags bearing the party logo, a golden peacock.
A clear picture of the final nationwide result may take days to emerge, but some observers are already expecting a landslide for the NLD.
As of 11.30 p.m (1700 GMT), the NLD had taken 96 of the first 106 seats announced in the 498-seat upper and lower houses of parliament, with the USDP taking six seats and smaller parties four.
However, the NLD campaign manager in Mandalay, Shwe Hla, told The Irrawaddy that he expected his party to lose all four seats in the state in Meiktila -- the scene of violence between Buddhist and Muslims in 2013 which left more than 40 people dead and displaced thousands, mostly Muslims.
A former NLD MP for the state, U Win Htein, was criticized by nationalists for speaking up for Muslims following the violence.
The NLD has subsequently failed to field a single Muslim candidate because, one official in the party said, it feared angering an ultra-nationalist group of monks called Ma Ba Tha.
Dozens of Muslims have also been barred from running in the election on dubious citizenship grounds, while hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were disenfranchised earlier this year.
In other areas, powerful members of the ruling USDP, including Chairman Htay Oo, have lost out to NLD opponents. Shwe Mann, who had been considered a likely presidential candidate for the party, lost in his constituency of Phyu.
Ex-officers, however, have pledged to accept the results -- unlike in 1990 when the military seized control after the NLD swept to victory.
When asked whether he would accept an NLD victory, Commander-in-Chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing replied that there was “no reason to deny [it]."
"We must accept the people’s choice,” he added.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate leader of the NLD -- who spent 15 years under house arrest for opposing the former junta -- urged supporters at party headquarters Monday not to “provoke” candidates who have lost.
“Until now the election results have not been announced officially. But we think that the people will have a good picture in their mind of what the situation could be,” she said.
The scale of any victory for the NLD may remain in doubt for some days.
To secure an overall absolute majority, it would have to win more than two-thirds of the elected seats in the two chambers of parliament -- 25 percent of the seats are allocated to non-elected military.
The parliament does not form a government, but does elect the next president - a position Suu Kyi is unable to perform because she has two foreign sons.
A clause in the military-drafted constitution bars anyone from the top job if they have foreign relatives, and is widely seen as aimed at Suu Kyi.
United Nations Sec. Gen. Ban Ki Moon said in a statement late Monday that the election had been characterized by "patience, dignity and enthusiasm" and marked a new era for Myanmar.
He also echoed Suu Kyi in encouraging all those involved in the election to maintain their respect for one another and to wait for the final results before responding.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the election illustrated that Myanmar had moved "one step closer to democracy".
