Turnout high as polls close in Myanmar election

By Joshua Carroll

YANGON

Observers predicted a high turnout in Myanmar's freest general election for decades as polls closed Sunday afternoon.

After voting stations closed at 4 p.m. (GMT0930), a pre-election survey commissioned by Mizzima, a local magazine, said turnout could be as high as 85 percent.

Earlier, voters had thronged stations across Yangon, the commercial capital, with many waking before dawn to queue.

Many expect the vote to finally propel Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party to power after decades of struggle against a brutal military regime.

"I voted for the NLD," said Soe Min, his little finger stained with purple ink to indicate that he had cast his ballot.

"I believe they can change the country. It won't happen in one day but gradually things will change."

But even if the NLD win enough seats to elect the next president -- who will form the new government -- the hugely popular Suu Kyi will be unable to take the top job because the country's charter bars her.

Other flaws in the election have led rights groups to warn that it is unlikely to be properly free and fair, though barring any major foul play it is expected to prove the best chance in generations for Myanmar's citizens to choose their own government.

Many Muslim candidates and voters have been excluded from the election amid a rising wave of Buddhist nationalism.

Dozens of Muslims were barred from running on dubious citizenship grounds and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were disenfranchised earlier this year.

The NLD failed to field a single Muslim candidate because, one official in the party said, it feared angering an ultra-nationalist group of monks called Ma Ba Tha.

The group has branded the NLD the party of "Islamists".

Than Shwe, a Muslim who works in Yangon's multicultural downtown area, and who shares a name with Myanmar's former tyrannical head of state, told Anadolu Agency that he had voted for the NLD despite their refusal to field Muslim candidates.

"This is not just about one group of people," he said. "It's about the entire country."

Results are expected to come in slowly, with officials not expecting a clear picture to emerge until at least Tuesday (Nov. 10) morning.