NLD, Shan Party Lead Opposition Assault

A man points at a map of Burma with the NLD candidates' photos at the party's headquarters in Rangoon, April 3, 2012.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party and an ethnic Shan party now spearhead the opposition challenge to Burma’s military-backed government following Sunday’s by-elections, for which official results were announced Tuesday.

In the historic polls that put pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in office after she spent most of the last two decades under house arrest, her National League for Democracy (NLD) has won 43 out of the 44 seats it contested, losing one to an ethnic party in northern Burma’s Shan state, according to the Election Commission.

The Lashio district election commission in Shan state said that the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party candidate, Sai Sam Min, had beaten the NLD candidate in Lashio by about 1,700 votes, Shan Herald News Agency reported Tuesday.

The 45th seat, which the NLD did not contest after its candidate was disqualified from running in March, was taken by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which holds an unshakeable majority in parliament.

Shan

The NLD’s loss of the Lashio seat to the SNDP shows that the NLD’s has not made much headway in terms of rallying support among the various ethnic groups.

The SNDP, also known as the White Tiger Party, mainly represents interests of ethnic Shan, which form Burma’s second-largest ethnic group and account for about nine percent of the country’s population.

The SNDP, which will be the next largest party after the NLD with 22 seats in parliament, is one of the strongest and most independent of Burma’s ethnic parties, but has often sided with the NLD.

Its forerunner, the Shan National League for Democracy, was the second-largest winning party in 1990 elections, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won by a landslide but was prevented by the military from taking office.

Ethnic affairs

In this year’s by-elections, Aung San Suu Kyi campaigned on the platform that ending ethnic conflict in the country’s border regions would be one of her top priorities, alongside amending the 2008 constitution and ensuring rule of law.

The United Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of ethnic groups, said Tuesday the electoral results show that ethnic people trust the pro-democracy icon and that she could be a mediator in ethnic-government relations.

Shan ethnic leader Khun Htun Oo said, “I don’t think that Aung San Suu Kyi will forget ethnic affairs. Because of events, she cannot ignore it,” Mizzima News reported.

In her victory speech on Monday, Aung San Suu Kyi promised to work with other parties despite the NLD’s majority win.

"We hope that all other parties that took part in the elections will be in a position to cooperate with us to create a genuinely democratic atmosphere in our nation,” she said.

Seats

The only other seat that the NLD did not win of the 45 seats up for grabs in the by-election was taken by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which maintains its unassailable majority in Burma’s parliament.

The NLD did not compete in the Sagaing township constituency in central Burma after its candidate was disqualified in March on the grounds that one of his parents no longer has Burmese citizenship.

The NLD will now have 37 seats in the 440-seat lower house, four in the 224-seat upper house, and two seats in regional assemblies, making it the third-largest bloc behind the USDP and unelected military officials, for which one quarter of seats are reserved.

But NLD’s win could pave the way for Aung San Suu Kyi to run for the Burmese presidency in 2015, when the next general elections are scheduled to be held.

Voting in the by-elections was cancelled two weeks before polling day in three constituencies in northern Burma’s Kachin state, where fighting continues between government troops and the ethnic rebel Kachin Independence Army.

An end to the country’s ethnic conflicts and alleged rights abuses involving government troops, alongside a free and fair election on Sunday, is a key demand of Western nations that have imposed sanctions on Burma.

EU foreign ministers will discuss easing sanctions when they meet on April 23, a spokeswoman for the European Commission said Monday.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, at its summit in Phnom Penh, also called Tuesday for easing the sanctions.

Speaking on the sidelines of the regional body’s summit, in his first public remarks about the vote, President Thein Sein praised the by-election as “very successful.”

Reported by Rachel Vandenbrink.