Breaking | Suu Kyi’s party wins historic majority in Myanmar election

Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition on Friday won a parliamentary majority from weekend polls that will allow it to elect a president and form a government in a historic shift in power from the army.

The election, the first Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party has contested since 1990, saw a huge turnout that has yielded more than 80 per cent of seats for the NLD.

After a drip-feed of results from the Union Election Commission, the NLD on Friday sailed through the two-thirds majority it needs to rule, claiming 348 parliamentary seats with a number of results yet to be declared.

Government now beckons for Suu Kyi’s party in a seismic change of the political landscape in a country controlled for five decades by the military.

A comfortable majority gives Suu Kyi’s party control of the lower and upper houses, allowing it to elect the president and form the government.

A big majority gives Suu Kyi, 70, leverage in the political wrangling ahead with a military establishment that has been chastened at the polls but retains sweeping powers.