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YANGON, Myanmar – According to the comprehensive preliminary results, the ruling party led by Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar has won just over half of the by-elections seats.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won seven of the 13 seats vacated by death or resignation. The first results for 12 races showed that he had won six seats, and the deferred result of the 13th race, for the constitution of a lower house in the west of Chin State gave him his seventh victory.
The results of Saturday's polls showed that the NLD generally maintained its support in the heart of the country, but yielded seats to parties representing ethnic minorities in the areas where they live, mainly in border regions.
The NLD won a landslide victory in the 2015 general election, while broad popular support had emerged to end decades of military rule. But minority groups were disappointed by the fact that the NLD chief's government, Suu Kyi, failed to meet their demands for greater autonomy and a halt to the aggressive activities of the group. army on their territories.
While the results of the small number of races have a negligible effect on the political balance of power, the debates have been closely monitored for trends before the next general election in 2020.
The return of voters to ethnic minority parties representing their interests had already been seen in another round of byelections last year. This year's polls seemed to highlight the danger of the NLD's low voter turnout, possibly the cause of the surprise defeat of an NLD candidate for a seat in the Yangon regional parliament.
The contest was won by a representative of the Solidarity Party, the Union, the country's main political group after the NLD. The USPP, backed by the military, won three seats in polling stations on Saturday.
Suu Kyi's appeal to the country's Buddhist majority has suffered little from a crisis affecting 700,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority who fled the country's brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the country. west of the country. However, economic development has lagged and is a source of disappointment among its supporters.
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This story was corrected to show that election day was Saturday instead of Sunday.
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, disseminated, rewritten or redistributed.
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