Voting Begins in Myanmar's General Elections

Myanmar kicked off its multi-party general election on Sunday, with more than 37 million eligible voters going to polling stations across the country.

A total of 42,047 polling stations served to ensure health measures against the COVID-19 pandemic opened at 6 a.m. local time, reports Xinhua.

According to the Union Election Commission, some 5,639 candidates, including 87 political parties and 260 independent candidates, fight for 1,117 parliamentary seats in the elections.

Of them, 1,565 candidates are contesting seats for the House of Representatives (Lower House), 779 for the House of Nationalities (Upper House), 3,112 for federal or state parliaments and 183 for ethnic minority seats.

In the elections, the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party fielded 1,106 candidates, while the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) had 1,089 to run for the parliamentary seats.

President U Win Myint and State counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi are running for seats in the House of Representatives (Lower House) and Vice-President Henry Van Thio is representing the electoral district of Chin State for a seat in the House of Nationalities (Upper House).

U Than Htay, Chairman of the USDP, holds a seat in the House of Representatives (Lower House).

The Union Election Commission called off polls in 15 townships and 665 village tracts of Bago region, Kachin, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine, Shan and Chin states, citing that the areas do not meet a condition to hold free and fair elections.

Due to the cancellation of elections in the areas, the number of constituencies in the elections was reduced from 1,171 to 1,117, while the number of registered election candidates also decreased from 6,969 to 5,639.

A total of 8,858 observers from home and abroad are registered to monitor the elections.

The polling stations are arranged to comply with preventive measures to reduce coronavirus transmission.

Under the new norm, no election center will be set up to announce the results, and the election results will start to be published through state-run media, official websites and online platforms from Monday.

Counting of ballots will be done shortly in the presence of contesting candidates and observers after the polling stations close at 4 pm local time on Sunday.

When the overseas advance voting closed on Oct. 26, Myanmar received about 75,000 advance votes from its citizens living abroad, while the number of local early votes reached about 3 million as of Nov. 3.

Late Friday, two days before the polls, a 60-day election campaign that started in early September ended.

The 2020 general elections are the third election under the country's 2008 Constitution.

The general elections, which take place every five years, will elect candidates for the next parliamentary term, which will elect a new president and two vice-presidents and create a new government.

According to the 2008 Constitution, in addition to elected officials, at each level of the legislative body directly nominated by the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services, the military holds 25 percent of non-elected parliamentary seats.

In the last general elections on Nov 8, 2015, the ruling NLD party secured an absolute majority of parliamentary seats and has been running the government since 2016.

In March 2021, the five-year term of the incumbent NLD government will end.