As tally rises, Suu Kyi insists she, not new president, will call the shots

TT, Yangon/ Mandalay,  Nov 10 (Reuters): Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi made it clear on Tuesday that she was ready to defy the powerful military's attempts to clip her wings, as fresh results from Sunday's historic election showed her party heading for a resounding win.

As vote tallies trickled in, Suu Kyi's long-oppressed National League for Democracy (NLD) looked set to take control of most regional assemblies as well as forming the central government, a triumph that will reshape the political landscape.

Under the constitution drawn up by Myanmar's former junta, Suu Kyi is barred from taking the presidency because her children are foreign nationals, a clause few doubt was inserted specifically to rule her out.

But in two interviews on Tuesday, the Nobel peace laureate said that, whoever was appointed president by the newly elected houses of parliament, she would call the shots.

She told the BBC that she would be “making all the decisions as the leader of the winning party” and Channel News Asia that the next president would have “no authority”.

The ruling Union Solidarity & Development Party (USDP), which was created by the junta and is led by retired soldiers, has conceded defeat in a poll that was a milestone on Myanmar's rocky path from dictatorship to democracy.

The NLD said its tally of results posted at polling stations showed it was on track to take more than two-thirds of seats that were contested in parliament, enough to form Myanmar's first democratically elected government since the early 1960s.

The party would win more than 250 of the 330 seats not occupied by the military in the lower house of parliament, NLD spokesman Win Htein predicted on Tuesday. Under the junta-crafted constitution, a quarter of the seats are unelected and reserved for the armed forces.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the party's own estimates of its performance.

The election commission said the NLD had won 78 of the 88 seats declared so far for the 440-strong lower house. No seats have been declared in the upper house.

Official results also showed that Sunday's election had handed the NLD a landslide win in the battle for regional assemblies, with Suu Kyi's party winning 143 of the 165 seats declared so far for local legislatures and the USDP just 12.

Still, analysts say a period of uncertainty may be looming for the former Burma because it is not clear if Suu Kyi and the generals will be able to share power easily.

Sunday's vote was the Southeast Asian nation's first general election since the military ceded power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011, ushering in reforms and opening up to foreign investors.