Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves after casting her vote at a polling station in Bahan township, Yangon, yesterday.
YANGON: Myanmar voters cast their ballots yesterday in a historic election that could thrust Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party into power and finally pull the nation away from the grip of the military.
The opposition leader was mobbed by scores of reporters as she voted in Yangon. Supporters crushed into the polling station, shouting “victory, victory”. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party believes a fair vote will power it into government after a decades-long struggle against army dictatorship.
But the Nobel Laureate is barred from the presidency by the army-scripted constitution and the NLD faces an uphill struggle as a quarter of seats are reserved for the military.
“I have cast my vote, my duty is done,” said 74-year-old Myint Aung, at the Yangon polling station, showing a little finger dipped in purple ink to indicate he has voted.
Queues of people in longyis, or traditional sarongs, built up before daybreak at polling stations nationwide in a sign of the enthusiasm that has accompanied the milestone vote, hoped to be Myanmar’s fairest for a generation.
The Southeast Asian nation was ruled for five decades by a junta that smothered opponents with violence and jail. But in 2011 the junta suddenly handed power to a semi-civilian government led by ex-generals.
Sweeping reforms since have loosened the straitjacketed economy. Some 30 million people were eligible to vote, in an event with major logistical challenges across a vast and poor country.
Many voters are nervous over how the army will react if it loses. Fraud has riddled previous contests, but election officials insisted the early voting proceeded smoothly.
“We haven’t had any complaints so far,” Win Naing, an election commission official, said.
After polls closed in late afternoon, screens at the NLD headquarters in Yangon tracked the count as figures trickled in from across the country.
Official results are not expected until today at the earliest.
It is the first election the NLD has contested since 1990, when it won a landslide but the army ignored the result and put Mrs Suu Kyi under 20 years of house arrest.
The 70-year-old Mrs Suu Kyi is not allowed to be president under a charter that blocks anyone with foreign children from top office — Mrs Suu Kyi’s two sons are British. But on Thursday Mrs Suu Kyi declared an NLD win would see her take a position “above the president”.
But hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in Rakhine State were excluded from voting and polls were not held in border areas where fighting between the army and ethnic rebels simmers.
However, Mrs Suu Kyi’s supporters, many of whom voted for the first time yesterday, are hopeful. “I couldn’t sleep the whole night I was so excited,” Ohnmar Win, 38, said.
“It’s my first time voting. I hope for the best. I will go to the NLD headquarters in the evening to wait for the results,” she added.
To win a majority — and have free rein to choose its presidential candidate — the NLD needs to secure just over two-thirds of the contested seats, although it could still make alliances with smaller parties if it falls short.
It is up against President Thein Sein’s ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, which needs only a third of seats to join up with the military bloc, allotted 25% of all parliamentary seats, to select its presidential nominee.