KAWHMU,
Myanmar: Democracy champion Aung San Suu
Kyi looked set to make history in Myanmar elections Sunday, but complaints of
ballot-tampering cast fresh doubt on the fairness of the parliamentary vote.
Many
supporters waited for hours in searing heat to glimpse the 66-year-oldNobel
laureate, who is running for office for the first time in the by-elections,
after being locked up by the junta for most of the past 22 years.
The 45
seats at stake are not enough to threaten the ruling party's majority, but a
seat in parliament would give the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader a
chance to shape legislation for the first time.
Observers
believe Myanmar's new quasi-civilian government wants Suu Kyi to win a place in
parliament to burnish its reform credentialsreform credentials and smooth the
way for an easing of Western sanctions.
The
polls were however marred somewhat by allegations of ballot-paper
irregularities, notably that wax had been put over the check box for the NLD
that could be rubbed off later to cancel the vote.
"This
is happening around the country. The election commission is responsible for
what is occurring," NLD spokesman Nyan Win told AFP.
"I
have sent a complaint letter to the union election commission. If it continues
like this it can harm the prestige of the election."
In the
run-up to the vote, the party decried alleged intimidation of candidates and
other irregularities.
Suu Kyi
said on Friday that the vote could not be considered "a genuinely free and
fair election" but stopped short of announcing a boycott.
A 2010
general election, won by the military's political proxies, was plagued by
complaints of cheating and the exclusion of Suu Kyi, who was released from
seven straight years of house arrest shortly afterwards.
The
seats being contested Sunday were made vacant by MPs who joined the government.
Polling was to close at 0930 GMT and official results are expected within a
week, although the parties may declare how they fared earlier.
In rural
villages dotted between parched fields, people stood in front of their thatched
bamboo homes and waved enthusiastically as Suu Kyi's convoy snaked past on
Sunday, whipping up thick clouds of dust.
A crowd
of supporters and journalists mobbed the activist as she visited a polling
station in the rural constituency of Kawhmu, where her main rival is a former
military doctor with the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.
Voters,
many in traditional ethnic Karen dress, queued patiently in the heat to cast
their votes.
"I'll
vote for Mother Suu because I love and cherish her," said 43-year-old
labourer San San Win.
"We
don't expect anything from her. We're really glad she came to our
village," she added.
The NLD
swept to a landslide election victory in 1990, but the generals who ruled the
country formerly known as Burma for decades until last year never recognised
the result.
Suu
Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, was not a candidate
herself then because she was under house arrest.
A
gruelling schedule of rallies and speeches has taken its toll on the health of
the opposition leader, who cancelled campaigning in the week before the vote
after she fell ill and was put on a drip during a visit to the south.
Suu Kyi
appeared to have recovered her strength on Sunday, smiling broadly when she
emerged from the house where she was staying just after dawn in Kawhmu, about
two hours' drive from Yangon.
Nyan
Win, the NLD spokesman, said on Saturday that Suu Kyi was "weak, but we do
not need to worry".
After
almost half a century of military rule, the junta in March last year handed
power to a new government led by President Thein Sein, one of a clutch of
former generals who shed their uniforms to contest the 2010 election.
Since
then, the regime has surprised even its critics with a string of reforms such
as releasing hundreds of political prisoners and welcoming the NLD back into
mainstream politics.
But the
continued existence of political detainees, ongoing fighting between government
troops and ethnic rebels, and alleged human rights abuses remain major concerns
for Western nations which have imposed sanctions on the regime.
Unlike
in 2010, the government allowed foreign observers and journalists to witness
Sunday's polls. More than six million people were eligible to vote.
"This
is a crucial moment in Myanmar's history," UN human rights envoy Tomas
Ojea Quintana said in a statement, calling the 2010 election a "missed
opportunity" that should be rectified now.
-
AFP/ck
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