Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing wins parliamentary vote to become president
Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
Photo: AFP Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing won a parliamentary vote on Friday to become the country’s president, formalising his grip on political power in the war-torn nation five years after he ousted an elected government.
His transition from top general to civilian president follows a recent lopsided election won overwhelmingly by an army-backed party, which critics and Western governments derided as a sham to perpetuate military rule behind a veneer of democracy.
The 69-year-old general orchestrated the 2021 coup that forced out the government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and placed her under arrest, sparking widespread protests that morphed into nationwide armed resistance against the junta.
In a live broadcast of the vote count in a parliament dominated by the election-winning Union Solidarity and Development Party and the military’s quota of appointed armed forces legislators, former commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing comfortably passed the threshold required to win the presidential vote.
Min Aung Hlaing’s ascent to the presidency – a position that analysts say he has long sought – followed a major reshuffle in the leadership of Myanmar’s armed forces, which he had led since 2011.
Myanmar’s new military chief Ye Win Oo delivers a speech in Naypyidaw on Monday.
Photo: EPA/Myanmar military information team On Monday, as he was nominated in parliament as a presidential candidate, Min Aung Hlaing anointed Ye Win Oo, a former intelligence chief seen as fiercely loyal to the general, as his successor to lead the military.
The military handover and Min Aung Hlaing’s rise to the presidency are seen by analysts as a strategic pivot to consolidate his control of Myanmar as head of a nominally civilian government, while serving the interests of an armed forces that has run the country directly for five of the past six decades. “He has long harboured the ambition to trade his title of commander-in-chief for president and it appears his dreams are now becoming a reality,” said Aung Kyaw Soe, an independent Myanmar analyst.
Still, the civil war that has wrecked Myanmar for much of the last five years is raging, with some anti-junta groups that include remnants of Suu Kyi’s party and long-standing ethnic minority armies forming a new combined front this week to take on the military. “Our vision and strategic objectives are to completely dismantle all forms of dictatorship, includin
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