A man looks at a graffiti congratulating Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party’s election victory in Mandalay, Myanmar. (AP Photo)
YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has won her parliamentary seat, official results showed Wednesday, leading a near total sweep by her party that will give the country its first government in decades that isn’t under the military’s sway.
While a win of that magnitude virtually assures the National League for Democracy of electing the president as well, Suu Kyi is barred from becoming president by a constitutional hurdle inserted by the junta when it transferred power in 2011 to a quasi-civilian government. Still, she recently has declared that she will be the country’s de facto leader, acting “above the president,” if her party forms the next government.
“I make all the decisions because I’m the leader of the winning party. And the president will be one whom we will choose just in order to meet the requirements of the constitution,” she said. “He (the president) will have to understand this perfectly well that he will have no authority. That he will act in accordance with the positions of the party.”
That he will act in accordance with the positions of the party.”
In a sign she intends to play a key role, Suu Kyi requested meetings with the military chief, current president and the chairman of parliament next week, apparently to discuss the formation of the new government. It is “very crucial that the government implements, for the pride of the country and the peaceful desire of people,” the results of Sunday’s elections, she said in the three letters sent yesterday.
The military, which took power in a 1962 coup and brutally suppressed several pro-democracy uprisings during its rule, gave way to a nominally civilian elected government in 2011 — with strings attached.
The army installed retired senior officers in the ruling party to fill Cabinet posts and granted itself constitutional powers, including control of powerful ministries and a quarter of seats in the 664-member two-chamber Parliament.
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