Aung San Suu Kyi has won Myanmar's landmark election and claimed a staggering majority in parliament, ending half a century of dominance by the military and providing the symbol of a decades-old democracy movement with a mandate to rule.


The Guardian reports that the government's election commission in the capital of Naypyidaw said the National League for Democracy (NLD) party had won 348 seats across the lower and upper house of parliament, 19 more than the 329 needed for an absolute majority.


With only 83% of the results announced so far this week, the party's majority is likely to rise yet further.


Although Aung San Suu Kyi is banned from the presidency under an army-drafted constitution, her party will now be able to push through legislation, form a government and handpick a president.


Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest, has said that a triumph for the NLD would place her "above the president'. An NLD government would be the first administration not chosen by the country's military establishment and their political allies since the early 1960s, most of that time under army dictatorship. Months of political haggling will now begin as the nation is drastically reordered.