NLD declares landslide victory Monday

"We can confirm that the NLD won at least 42 of the 45 contested seats," said Nyan Win, campaign director for the National League for Democracy. 

Nobel Peace Prize-winning Suu Kyi, who had been detained for 15 years by the former ruling military junta, won an estimated 90 per cent of the votes cast Sunday in her Kawhmu constituency, 30 kilometres south of Yangon, assuring her a seat in the lower house of parliament, where she is likely to become official opposition leader.
Official results were expected in a few days, but the NLD released the party's results from its Yangon headquarters as the vote counting was taking place publicly and in the presence of the participating parties.
"This should be a victory of the people with dignity," Suu Kyi said on election night. "I would like all NLD followers and members to avoid aggressive speech or actions against the other side."  

It was the first election Suu Kyi, 66, contested after she was under house arrest during Myanmar's past two general elections in 1990 and 2010.    Her supporters celebrated outside the NLD's Yangon office Sunday, chanting, "Mother Suu! Mother Suu!"
The NLD contested all the seats up for grabs Sunday, but one of its candidates was disqualified and two constituencies were so remote that their results were slow in coming.
In the 1990 elections, the NLD won by a landslide but was denied power for two decades by the junta.
"I think the government this time didn't have much incentive to rig the vote, unlike the previous junta," Win Min, a political scientist at Harvard University, said, pointing out that the by-elections' 45 seats account for a fraction of the combined 1,160 seats in the three houses of parliament.
"They wanted to see the by-election go fairly free and fair so that the international community would respond to it positively, especially by easing the main parts of the financial sanctions, which the EU and US are now likely to do after the by-election went fairly well," he predicted.
The NLD reported irregularities during the campaign, such as placing the names of deceased people on voter lists and attacks on its candidates, but no significant violence was seen.
The by-election was held to fill seats left empty after some legislators took up cabinet posts a year ago.
Despite the low number of seats up for grabs, the by-elections were deemed an important litmus test for the next general election, to be held in 2015, and for the status of Myanmar's political reforms as the international community considers easing the sanctions placed on the junta.
The NLD did not contest the 2010 general elections, which were won by the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party. They were widely criticised as being neither free nor fair.
However, the government they put in power, led by former general and President Thein Sein, has steered a reform course for Myanmar, which had been governed by military dictatorships from 1962 to 2010.
They made Myanmar an international pariah because of their poor human rights records.
Thein Sein opened a dialogue with Suu Kyi in August, paving the way for her and the NLD to join mainstream politics.