At 4pm on 9 November, 24 hours after polls shut the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) published an open letter on social media saying they were confident of victory in Shan State.
TheShan language letter read: “This time, with your support, we won again,”
Sai Lek, a Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) spokesperson told SHAN that after receiving preliminary results from the township election commissions, he is very confident that the party has won all the seats in at least 20 Shan State townships and that they will win at least some of the seats in the remaining townships.
He said: “We released the open letter because what we win is not for our party, but for a better future for the people, for the country to be peaceful.”
The statement, titled “Thank You to the Public,” talked of the SNLD’s first electoral competition in 1990, in which the party won the majority of seats in Shan State and came second nationally to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
Sai Lek reaffirmed the party’s platform of promising to amend the 2008 Constitution.
He said: “We will amend it for the people.”
The SNLD competed for 46 Lower House seats, 14 Upper House seats, and 96 regional seats in Burma’s national parliamentary election yesterday. Votes are still being counted, with final confirmation of the counts expected to be confirmed throughout the week.
The first 15 victories announced by the Union Election Commission (UEC) were located in Yangon Division, and were won by the NLD. The government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed one seat.
By SAI AW / Shan Herald Agency News (S.H.A.N)
Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
