Aung San Suu Kyi, chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD), has won Myanmar's parliamentary by-elections, securing a seat of parliamentary House of Representatives, the NLD headquarters announced Sunday night.
Suu Kyi won 75 percent of the ballots in Kawhmu township constituency in which she contested, the announcement said.
The result was available hours after the polling was closed in the afternoon at 4 p.m. (9:30 GMT), followed by counting of votes in the presence of polling station officers, candidates' election agents and 10 witnesses from the public at the scene.
Aung San Suu Kyi, AC is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, her National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010.
Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country, one of only five people ever to receive the honor. In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal. On 1 April 2012, her party, the National League for Democracy, announced that she was elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the lower house of the Burmese parliament, representing the constituency of Kawhmu.
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