YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar's election commission said on Friday that the party of the Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had won 348 seats in Parliament, giving her democracy movement a majority and the power to select the country's next president.
The national election on Sunday, the first credible vote in a generation, was a rout of the military-backed ruling party, which at the last count had won only 40 seats. The full results — nearly 20 percent of seats have yet to be announced — are expected in the coming days.
Both the president and the commander in chief of the military have congratulated Suu Kyi on the victory by her party, the National League for Democracy, paving the way for what the opposition hopes will be a peaceful transfer of power, the first in many decades.
The new parliament will meet in January and select a president in March. It will be the first time since 1962 that the military establishment does not control the government.
Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency by a provision in the current Constitution, but she has said that she will choose a president to serve as her proxy.
The military will retain significant power, including direct control over the police and large parts of the bureaucracy. The commander in chief also retains autonomy from the president and parliament under the Constitution, which was written by a previous military junta. The military has veto power over changes to the Constitution.