Suu Kyi eyes poll majority, but fears for wider democratic

Aung San Suu Kyi said today she was confident her opposition party would win Myanmar's landmark elections if they are free and fair, but raised concerns over the country's overall progress towards democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner told AFP in an interview she expects her National League for Democracy (NLD) will secure a majority in November.
It will be the first nationwide poll the NLD has contested for 25 years in a country strait-jacketed for almost half a century by military rule.
The party won by a landslide in 1990 but was barred by the military from taking power.

Asked if she was confident of winning a dominant share of seats Suu Kyi replied: "If the elections are free and fair, of course."
"I think looking at the governments which have gone before us, we should be in a position to form a better government," she told AFP, in some of her most sanguine comments yet as Myanmar fast approaches an election many hope will be the freest in its modern history.

Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, led her opposition party into parliament after the current quasi-civilian government replaced military rule in 2011.
But Myanmar's junta-era constitution blocks her pathway to the presidency, and a recent attempt to change it was quashed by the still-powerful military and its allies.

And the veteran campaigner said she was also "very concerned" about irregularities in the run-up to the polls, stressing that the long-cloistered country still has a long way to go before it can be called democratic.
Suu Kyi said her party was concerned that it was a target of rivals "using religion for political purposes" as the Buddhist-majority nation grapples with the increasing influence of radical nationalist monks.
Scant progress had been made, she said, in two complaints filed with election authorities over cases in which political rivals started "attacking" the NLD during religious ceremonies.
"What you are asking, are we concerned about irregularities about fraud and so on and of course we are very concerned," she said.

Earlier this month President Thein Sein, a former general, launched a dramatic internal putsch of the ruling party using security forces, ousting rival Shwe Mann from the party leadership in a move seen as an effort by the army and its allies to tighten their grip ahead of the polls.