A former prime minister and longtime adjutant to Myanmar’s military dictator was elected president on Friday by the country’s newly inaugurated Parliament, a move that cements the military’s control of a new political system. Thein Sein, a career army bureaucrat who as prime minister was the public face of the military government, won more than 60 percent of the vote in the two-chamber Parliament, news agencies reported from Myanmar.
After the first week of parliamentary sessions, a picture has emerged of Myanmar’s self-styled democracy: secretive, heavily scripted and dominated by the hierarchy of the departing junta.
After nearly five decades of military rule, elections last November and a new Constitution were ostensibly meant to usher in a return to civilian rule.
But of the top five political figures under the new system — the president, two vice presidents and the speakers of the lower and upper houses of Parliament — four are former senior military officers.
Mr. Thein Sein is regarded as a low-key administrator who is perhaps best known within the military for his fealty to Than Shwe, the country’s aging senior general, who now appears to be taking a behind-the-scenes advisory role similar to Deng Xiaoping’s in China during that country’s transition to a market economy.
As commander in chief and head of the junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe has wielded near absolute power in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, since he took over in 1992.
“How much will he be involved in day-to-day affairs? This is the most important question in Burmese politics today,” said Aung Naing Oo, deputy director of the Vahu Development Institute, a research organization based in Thailand. “How much will he remain in the shadows or how much does he want to impose his authority on the new government — we don’t know.”
Mr. Thein Sein must now select his cabinet, but analysts say many of the choices have already been made, with some ministers reportedly picked by General Than Shwe himself, according to Win Min, a professor at Payap University in Thailand who is on leave in the United States.
“It’s become clear that Than Shwe will remain the most powerful person,” Mr. Win Min said. “People believe that where Than Shwe is, the power will follow.”
Among other appointments this week, Thura Shwe Mann, a senior member of the junta, was elected speaker of the lower house of Parliament, and Khin Aung Myint, a retired general, ran unopposed and became speaker of the upper house. The two vice presidents are Tin Aung Myint Oo, a former member of the junta, and Sai Mauk Kham, a doctor from the ethnic Shan minority.
The proceedings this week — the first meeting of a Parliament in Myanmar in more than two decades — have been highly choreographed, with only sketchy details reported in the state news media. Reporters for foreign news agencies have been banned from Parliament.
In a country where large popular uprisings have challenged the military at least twice in recent history, the senior generals appear continually wary of threats to their power.
General Than Shwe warned in a bold-faced article on Friday’s front page of the government’s mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, that “external elements” were seeking to mobilize the local population “to disrupt national development.”
“I would like to urge the entire people to guard the nation with political awareness against any forms of disruptions in order that the mother country’s independence and sovereignty will never be under alien influence,” General Than Shwe said. New York Times
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