Myanmar ruling party wins majority in general elections

Yangon, Nov. 13 (IANS): Myanmar’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, headed by incumbent State Councellor Aung San Suu Kyi, has won more than enough seats in Parliament to form a new government, the Union Election Commission (UEC) announced on Friday.

It announcement comes days after the NLD claimed victory based on early results of the November 8 general elections.

As of Friday morning, the NLD has won 346 seats in the Union Parliament — the House of Representatives (Lower House) and the House of Nationalities (Upper House), passing the target parliamentary seats to win, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the UEC’s latest figures, the NLD party has secured 225 seats in the House of Representatives (Lower House), 121 seats in the House of Nationalities (Upper House), 434 seats in the Regional or State Parliaments and eight ethnic minority seats in the Regional or State Parliaments, respectively.

According to the 2008 Constitution, the military possesses 25 per cent of the 642 totals seats in the Union Parliament and the winning party in the general elections needs to secure more than half of the total seats to form a new government.

A total of 5,639 candidates including 1,106 candidates from the NLD and 1,089 from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) ran in this year’s multi-party general elections.

The USDP has won 58 parliamentary seats including 25 seats for the Union Parliament and 33 for the Regional or State Parliaments, the UEC’s figures showed. The ruling NLD party won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in the last general elections on November 8, 2015, and has been running the government since 2016.