USDP Huge Victory Claim Challenged by Opposition Parties

RANGOON — The Burmese junta's proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed election victory on Tuesday, saying it had won about 80 percent of the seats.

Citing an unknown USDP senior official, Rangoon-based international news agencies on Tuesday reported that the USDP, formed by Prime Minister Thein Sein and other former top military officials who shed their uniforms to contest Sunday's election, had won broadly nationwide, although official results have not been released.

The USDP official also said turnout was more than 70 percent, despite eyewitness reports that few people had been seen at the polling stations.

According to sources close to Rangoon mayor Aung Thein Lin, who is also a USDP candidate, Burmese junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe ordered him to do whatever he had to in order to claim 70 percent of seats in Rangoon Division for the regime-backed party.

“So Aung Thein Lin ordered the township level election commissions to stop vote counting if the opposition was leading, and then extra ballot boxes with so-called advanced votes would arrive to turn the losers into winners,” one source told The Irrawaddy.

Many opposition politicians claim they were robbed of seats they had lawfully won.

According to initial results, opposition parties, especially the National Democratic Force (NDF), a splinter group of the National League for Democracy (NLD), won numerous seats in Rangoon, the largest city, and in other areas. Later, the election commission announced the seats had been won by the USDP.

“We won the voters' ballot, but we lost the official count,” NDF Chairman Than Nyein told The Irrawaddy. “We suffered an astounding defeat because of the so-called advanced votes. Those ballots arrived when USDP candidates were threatened with defeat. When we asked for the voters' list, the election commission refused.”

Ethnic minority groups and many candidates from the National Unity Party (NUP), the successor to late dictator Ne Win's Burma Socialist Program Party, added their voices to opposition complaints that the junta-backed party had cheated before and during the election.

Signs of voter intimidation were also reported by the Chin Human Rights Organization, which said that in a ward in Chin State in western Burma one of the polling stations was at an army checkpoint.

Applause for the election result came from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), whose current chairman, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem said Asean welcomed the election “as a significant step forward in the implementation of the seven-point Roadmap for Democracy.”

The Vietnamese minister said Asean “is encouraging Myanmar [Burma] to continue to accelerate the process of national reconciliation and democratization, for stability and development in the country."

irrawaddy