Aung San Suu Kyi aide nominated as Myanmar president

Politicians in Myanmar have begun the process of choosing a new president, following decades of military rule.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a crushing electoral victory last year, on Thursday nominated her close ally Htin Kyaw for the presidency.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a hugely popular democracy icon and Nobel laureate, has vowed to rule “above” the president, despite being barred from top office by the army-scripted constitution, 

As the ruling party’s favoured presidential candidate, Htin Kyaw is now on course to become the country’s first head of state in decades who is not a former top-ranking member of the military.

Htin Kyaw runs the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity to assist people in Myanmar’s poorest areas founded by Aung San Suu Kyi, and has from time to time served as her driver.

Three presidential candidates will be nominated on Thursday – one by the lower house of parliament, one by the upper house, and one by the military bloc. The constitution gives the armed forces a quarter of seats in both houses.

Htin Kyaw, an Oxford graduate with a degree in economics, was nominated from the lower house. 

Henry Van Thio, an MP of the ethnic Chin minority, is the NLD’s nominee from the upper house. 

At a later date, possibly late next week, parliament will hold a vote for president. The unsuccessful candidates will become vice presidents.

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“The National League for Democracy party dominates both the upper and lower house of parliament so it will get the president of its choosing, or at least it should if everything goes smoothly,” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay reported from the capital, Naypyitaw.

Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from top political office because she married and had children with a foreigner.

But she has vowed to run the country regardless through a proxy she would name as president.

The president picks the cabinet that will take over from President Thein Sein’s outgoing government on April 1, with the exception of the heads of the home, defence and border security ministries who will be appointed by the armed forces chief.