NBC’s Ian Williams reports on the run-up to Sunday’s elections By msnbc.com staff and news services – Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest in Myanmar, won a seat in the country’s lower house of parliament on Sunday, her party said.

The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party announced at its headquarters that the campaigner had won in Kawhmu, south of the commercial capital Yangon.

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“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has won. The NLD candidate has taken the Kawhmu constituency,” an NLD official announced to cheers from hundreds of supporters, referring to Suu Kyi by her honorific title.

Suu Kyi, who has spent a total of 15 years in detention since 1989, was contesting an election for the first time following her party’s decision to end its boycott of a political system dominated by serving or retired military.

The by-elections – only the country’s third in half a century – are a crucial test of reforms that could convince the West to end sanctions and its pariah image.

The United States and European Union have hinted that some sanctions – imposed over the past two decades in response to human rights abuses – may be lifted if the election is free and fair, unleashing a wave of investment in the impoverished but resource-rich country bordering rising powers India and China.

The charismatic and wildly popular Suu Kyi, complained last week of “irregularities”, though none significant enough to derail her party’s bid for 44 of the 45 available by-election seats.