Suu Kyi eyes majority in Myanmar election: media

YANGON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said she believes her party has won a parliamentary majority after a historic general election, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) has secured 78 of the 88 lower house seats announced so far, pointing to a landslide win as the results trickle in.



"We probably will get between, around 75 per cent in the union legislature," she told the British broadcaster in an interview.

The party needs to win 67 per cent of contested seats across both houses of parliament for a majority victory. It could take days for the full results to be officially announced.

Suu Kyi also told the BBC that the polls -- being billed as the fairest in decades in the former junta-ruled state -- were "largely free" despite "areas of intimidation".

Myanmar ruling party concedes poll defeat as Suu Kyi heads for landslide

The Nobel Laureate's party contested its first general election in a quarter of a century on Sunday.

It won a 1990 poll by a landslide but the results were ignored by the then ruling military which plunged the country back into years of isolation.

Two days before Sunday's election President Thein Sein reassured voters in a televised statement that his ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), as well as the country's all-powerful army, would respect the result.



When asked if she believed the results would be accepted, Suu Kyi said "people are far more politicised now" than both in a 1990 general election as well as 2012 by-elections.

The latter swept her and a few dozen NLD members into parliament two years after she was released from house arrest -- Suu Kyi spent a total of 15 years detained in her Yangon home by the military.

The 70-year-old also told the BBC that she believed "the communications revolution" would help fairness prevail.

"It's much more difficult for those who wish to engage in irregularities to get away with it," she said.