Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters claimed victory Monday in Myanmar's historic byelection that she hopes will mark the beginning of a new era for the country.
"The success we are having is the success of the people," Suu Kyi said, as a sea of supporters chanted her name and thrust their hands into the air to flash "V" for victory signs.
"It is not so much our triumph as a triumph of the people who have decided that they have to be involved in the political process in this country," she said. "We hope this will be the beginning of a new era."
Suu Kyi spoke to thousands of cheering supporters who gathered outside her opposition party headquarters in Yangon a day after her party declared she had won a parliamentary seat in the closely watched vote.
The Election Commission hasn't confirmed the results, but government officials have commented on Suu Kyi's victory.
"The government appeared to be following through on its promise of reform," CTV South Asia Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer said in a telephone interview from Yangon Monday.
"There's still a fairly wide gulf in political ideology between Aung San Suu Kyi and the government, but people across Myanmar are really seeing this as a day to celebrate," she told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel.
Whether or not the small democratic step for the military dictatorship will be enough for the West to ease crippling sanctions isn't known, she added.
"Enough Western nations are hinting at rethinking their policy and that this seems to be the logical what's next."
If confirmed, Suu Kyi will take public office for the first time and lead a small bloc of lawmakers from her opposition National League for Democracy in Myanmar's parliament.
The victory would mark a major milestone in the Southeast Asian nation, which is emerging from a ruthless era of military rule, and also an astonishing reversal of fortune for a woman who became one of the world's most prominent prisoners of conscience.
An adviser to President Thein Sein said he was "not really surprised that the NLD had won a majority of seats" in the byelection.
Asked if Suu Kyi might be given a cabinet post, he said, "Everything is possible. She could be given any position of responsibility because of her capacity."
Unofficial counts continued to trickle in Monday from poll watchers within Suu Kyi's party, and spokesman Han Than said the opposition had won at least 43 of the 44 parliament seats it had contested.
Those included all four seats up for grabs in the capital, Naypyitaw, which is populated by civil servants and would be an embarrassing sign of defeat for the government.
An official from the Election Commission said its regional office for Yangon had confirmed that Suu Kyi's party had won all six constituencies contested in Yangon and that full results from remote areas were expected by midweek.
The former junta had kept Suu Kyi imprisoned in her lakeside home for the better part of two decades. When she was finally released in late 2010, just after a general election that was deemed by most as neither free nor fair, few could have imagined she would so quickly make the leap from democracy advocate to elected official - opening the way for a potential presidential run in 2015.
But Myanmar has changed dramatically over that time.
The junta finally ceded power last year, and although many of its leaders merely swapped their military uniforms for civilian suits, they went on to stun even their staunchest critics by releasing political prisoners, signing ceasefires with rebels, relaxing press censorship and opening a direct dialogue with Suu Kyi.
Hoping to convince the international community of its progress, Myanmar invited dozens of Western and Asian election observers to monitor the vote and granted visas to hundreds of foreign journalists.
Suu Kyi herself said Friday that campaigning had been marred by irregularities and could not be considered fair - allegations her party reiterated Sunday.
Malgorzata Wasilewska, head of the European Union's observer team, called the voting process "convincing enough" but stopped short of declaring it credible yet. "In the polling stations that I visited . . . I saw plenty of good practice and good will, which is very important," she said.
The United States and the European Union have said that the fairness of the voting will be a major factor in their decision on whether to lift economic sanctions that were imposed to penalize the former junta.
With files from The Associated Press
