EU says Myanmar vote 'better than many expected'

[Jonathan Fairfield]

EU says Myanmar vote 'better than many expected'

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — The latest on landmark elections in Myanmar.

The head of the European Union's election observer team says the historic Myanmar elections were "better than many expected" but declined to call them free and fair.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told reporters Tuesday that the country had come a long way but "more reforms are needed to ensure truly genuine elections" in the future.

He says one of the problems was the constitutional framework where one quarter of Parliament seats are reserved for the military, meaning only 75 percent are elected at the polls.

Despite that, Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party is expected to win a landslide in Sunday's election, giving the country's its best chance to move toward greater democracy and loosen the grip of the military, which ruled the country for a half-century until 2011. It was replaced then by a quasi-civilian government, backed by the military.

The EU had a team of 150 observers monitoring the election.

-- (c) Associated Press 2015-11-10

[micmichd]

Quite irrelevant what EU thinks about Myanmar, but interesting to see a German's opinion about elections in a multicultural state in transition.