Suu Kyi loyalist elected as Myanmar president
NOBEL LAUREATE IS CONSTITUTIONALLY BANNED FROM PRESIDENCY
Myanmar’s parliament yesterday elected Win Myint, a loyalist of Aung San Suu Kyi, as new president, while Suu Kyi retained her executive authority over the government.
The vote comes as Suu Kyi’s civilian government has struggled to implement peace and national reconciliation, with the powerful military still embroiled in combat with ethnic rebels and under heavy international criticism for its brutal counterinsurgency campaign against the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Myanmar’s military ruled the country for a half-century during which it was accused of widespread abuses before partially handing power to a civilian government in 2016. It remains in charge of security matters and still faces accusations of rights abuses.
Win Myint, the vice-president selected as presidential candidate by the lower house and backed by Suu Kyi’s ruling party, received 403 votes from the combined houses. Myint Swe, the vice-president with the military’s backing, had 211 votes and Henry Van Tio, the vice-president selected by the upper house, had 18.
Like his predecessor, Htin Kyaw, who retired last week due to ill health, Win Myint, 66, is a longtime Suu Kyi loyalist and a stalwart member of her National League for Democracy, an affiliation that earned him a brief spell as a political prisoner more than two decades ago under the previous military government.
When Suu Kyi’s government was installed in 2016, she explained that she would be “above the president,” a situation amenable to both the president and the public.
The job of state counsellor was created especially for Suu Kyi because she is constitutionally banned from the presidency. A clause in the 2008 military-drafted constitution bars anyone with a foreign spouse or child from holding the job. It clearly targeted Suu Kyi, whose two sons are British, as was her late husband.
Joint sitting
Myanmar’s president is elected by a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament from among the country’s three vicepresidents, representing the lower house, the upper house and the military. Under the constitution, the military holds special privileges in the country’s administration, including a 25 per cent share of parliamentary seats and the three security portfolios in the Cabinet.
The National League for Democracy’s landslide election victory in late 2015 gave it large majorities in both houses.
Having been both a member of the NLD’s Central Executive Committee and speaker of the lower house for two years shows Win Myint holds the skills to be president, said Win Zaw, a lower house lawmaker from the party.