Asia-Pacific News

Pro-junta party heads for victory in Burma's election

Nov 9, 2010, 11:36 GMT

A picture made available on 9 November shows a man reading a newspaper which has coverage of the elections on its front page in a street in Yangon, Burma, on 08 November 2010. EPA/The Irrawaddy

Yangon - Myanmar's pro-junta party on Tuesday claimed to be heading for a landslide victory in the election that was criticized abroad as a 'sham,' stage-managed by the military.

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a proxy of the junta that has ruled Myanmar since 1988, claimed to have won about 80 per cent of the contested votes in Yangon, the largest city, and nearly 90 per cent in the capital of Naypyitaw, party sources said.

'The USDP is seen as a fully fledged, integrated part of the government machine,' British Ambassador to Myanmar Andrew Heyn said.

The official tally for Sunday's election has not yet been announced, but party representatives have been allowed to monitor the election commission's counting process.

Complaints of election fraud are mounting.

The pro-democracy National Democratic Force (NDF) won only 16 seats, all of them in Yangon, much fewer than anticipated.

'There was a lot of fraud in this election,' NDF leader Khin Mg Swe said. 'We will make objections to the election commission. The election was not a fair and free one.'

The commission, whose executive board was appointed by the junta, claimed that 73.8 per cent of all eligible voters cast their ballot on Sunday, the first polls since 1990.

The USDP was accused of taking possession of advance votes to assure their candidates' victories.

The National Unity Party (NUP), which fielded the second-most candidates, fared worse than some pundits expected.

Although hardly a pro-democracy party, it was hoped that the NUP would win enough seats to counterbalance the USDP, which is packed with ex-military men and government ministers.

The NUP candidates were mostly associated with former strongman Ne Win, the military dictator from 1962 to 1988.

Few anticipated Sunday's polls would be anything but unfair.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday criticized the polls as 'insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent.'

The junta kept opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house detention and refused to relase some 2,100 political prisoners prior to the election despite repeated appeals from Ban.

Ban repeated his call for the immediate release of the prisoners and Suu Kyi without 'further delay.'

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) boycotted the elections. The NDF is a breakaway party from the NLD, which won the 1990 election by a landslide but was never allowed to take power.

The NDF could put up only 160 candidates. At best, they can hope to become an opposition voice in a military-dominated government.

Sunday's election was for 1,159 seats in three houses of parliament: upper, lower and the regions/states chamber.

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