YANGON, Jan 4: Myanmar's pro-military party has a decisive lead in the first phase of junta-run elections, with the USDP winning 90 percent of the lower house seats announced so far, official results published in state media showed.
The military grabbed power in a 2021 putsch that triggered civil war, pitting pro-democracy rebels against junta forces for control of the country.
Myanmar's junta opened voting in the phased month-long election a week ago, with its leaders pledging the poll would bring on democracy. However, rights advocates and Western diplomats have condemned it as a sham and a rebranding of martial rule.
The dominant pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has won 87 of the 96 lower house seats announced, according to partial results from the Union Election Commission (UEC) released on Saturday and Sunday in state media.
Six ethnic minority parties picked up nine seats.
The winners of six more townships have yet to be announced in the first phase of voting. Two more phases are scheduled for January 11 and 25.
The USDP -- which many analysts describe as a civilian proxy of the military -- claimed an overwhelming victory in the first phase last week.
The massively popular but dissolved National League for Democracy (NLD) of democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi did not appear on ballots, and she has been jailed since the coup.
The military overturned the results of the last poll in 2020 after the NLD defeated the USDP by a landslide.
The military and USDP then alleged massive voter fraud, claims that international monitors say were unfounded.
The USDP also won 14 of the 15 regional and state constituency seats announced in the first phase, according to UEC results published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
The junta has said turnout in the first phase exceeded 50 percent of eligible voters, below the 2020 participation rate of around 70 percent.
Meanwhile, Myanmar's junta said on Sunday it would release more than 6,000 prisoners as part of an annual amnesty to mark the country's independence day.
"The Acting President of the Union of the Republic of Myanmar has pardoned 6,134 male and female prisoners who are serving their terms at respective prisons, detention centres and camps," the junta's National Defence and Security Council said in a statement.
Fifty-two foreign prisoners were also to be released and deported, it said in a separate statement.
The military has arrested thousands of protesters and activists since its February 2021 coup that ended Myanmar's brief democratic experiment and plunged the nation into civil war.
The yearly prisoner amnesty "on humanitarian and compassionate grounds", according to the national security council, comes as the country marks 78 years of independence from British colonial rule.
Hundreds of people were waiting for the release of their family members outside Yangon's Insein prison on Sunday morning, holding papers with names of prisoners on them, an AFP journalist said. "AFP
