Myanmar's opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in landmark parliamentary elections Sunday in the Southeast Asian country that has been under military rule since the early 1960s, her supporters say.
As results came in Sunday night from the poll watchers of Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy, party spokesman Nyan
Win projected it would win 40 of 45 parliamentary seats at stake.
No official results were expected before Monday. Independent verification of the vote was not possible.
But crowds of supporters erupted into cheers after the party said she won a seat, setting the stage for Suu Kyi to take public office for the first time.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has a new reform-minded government that wants to get out from under tough Western sanctions. It shocked the world with its intentions a year ago to hold free elections for a handful of seats in the country's parliament.
"We won! We won!" her supporters chanted while clapping, dancing, waving red party flags and gesturing with thumbs-up and V-for-victory signs in the country's main city of Yangon.
The results must be confirmed by the official electoral commission, however, which has yet to release any outcome and may not make an official declaration for days.
The win would mark the biggest prize of Suu Kyi's political career and a spectacular reversal of fortune for the 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate who the former junta had kept imprisoned in her lakeside home for the better part of two decades.
"I think it's going to be a trigger for accelerated change," Carleton University international affairs expert Elliot Tepper told CTV's News Channel Sunday.
"She has been an outside figure since her release from jail, commenting and criticizing ... now she will be the de facto leader of the opposition," he said.
"Even though the number of seats is very small, she is by far the most popular and well-known figure in the country," Tepper said in a telephone interview.
The military rulers may even want to give her a prominent role in government, he said.
But what the win and election gives the people of Myanmar is hope, Tepper said. Suu Kyi and her party won a crushing victory in 1990 that was rejected by the junta rulers, which then led a massive crackdown on dissent.
"They were surprised the freedom-loving people of Burma had a leader. They were shocked by the election results and refused to acknowledge it," Tepper said.
Sunday's byelection was called to fill just 45 vacant seats in Myanmar's 664-seat parliament and will not change the balance of power in a new government that is nominally civilian but still heavily controlled by retired generals.
Suu Kyi and other opposition candidates would have almost no say even if they win all the seats they are contesting.
While the seat number of seats is small, Suu Kyi will have a "disproportionate" influence over some government affairs, Tepper said.
"This is a huge change for Burma, just a huge change and she's been compared to say Nelson Mandela as a transformative figure," he said.
There's no doubt Suu Kyi represents the voice of the future, democracy and the people who have hopes for change, Tepper said.
Even though the flirtation with democracy is a step forward, Tepper wonders if it's all reversible and if it's simply window dressing.
But the leadership, suffering under crippling sanctions and the influence of its powerful neighbour and ally, China, may want to "rejoin the world," he said.
The victory claim came despite allegations by Suu Kyi's party that "rampant irregularities" had taken place on voting day.
Party spokesman Nyan Win said that by midday alone the party had filed more than 50 complaints to the Election Commission. He said most alleged violations concerned waxed ballot papers that made it difficult to mark votes. There were also ballot cards that lacked the Election Commission's seal, which would render them invalid.
Earlier, crowds of supporters mobbed Suu Kyi as she visited a polling station in the village after spending the night there. The tiny community of 3,000 farmers has no electricity or running water, and its near-total underdevelopment illustrates the profound challenges facing the country as it slowly emerges from 49 years of army rule.
Despite the reports of widespread irregularities, a confirmed victory by Suu Kyi could cheer Western powers and nudge them closer to easing economic sanctions they have imposed on the country for years.
Suu Kyi herself told reporters Friday that the campaigning for Sunday's vote had been anything but free or fair, but that she was pressing forward with her candidacy because it's "what our people want."
Last year, Myanmar's long-entrenched military junta handed power to a civilian government dominated by retired officers that skeptics decried as a proxy for continued military rule. But the new rulers -- who came to power in a 2010 vote that critics say was neither free nor fair -- have surprised the world with a wave of reform.
The government of President Thein Sein, himself a retired lieutenant general, has freed political prisoners, signed truces with rebel groups and opened a direct dialogue with Suu Kyi, who wields enough moral authority to greatly influence the Myanmar policy of the U.S. and other powers.
Suu Kyi's decision to endorse Thein Sein's reforms so far and run in Sunday's election represents a political gamble.
Once in parliament, she can seek to influence policy and challenge the government from within. But she also risks legitimizing a regime she has fought against for decades while gaining little true legislative power.
The party boycotted the last vote in 2010, but in January the government amended key electoral laws, paving the way for a run in this weekend's ballot.
A new reform was expected Monday when Myanmar's currency will be largely unshackled from government controls that kept the kyat at an artificially high rate for decades. The International Monetary Fund says the change could lift a major constraint on growth in one of Asia's least developed countries.
