The 611-3 vote by a joint session of Parliament yesterday was the first legislative act by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD.
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On Monday, a senior official claimed that Suu Kyi is unlikely to take a formal position in the upcoming government of her National League for Democracy.
Myanmar’s president-elect on Tuesday, March 22 proposed an 18-member Cabinet that will include party leader Suu Kyi, the former dissident who for decades had campaigned for a democratically elected government to replace the country’s military junta.
The list only contains the names, and their ministries will be decided later.
Prior to the November 8 elections, which saw the National League for Democracy win in a landslide victory, Suu Kyi, who was disqualified from running for president due to a constitutional clause, said that she would still rule the government and be “above the president”.
Relations between the armed forces and Suu Kyi will define the success of Myanmar’s most significant break from military rule since the army seized power in 1962.
“I doubt that Aung San Suu Kyi would take the position of the foreign minister”, said Toe Kyaw Hlaign, a political analyst.
However, accepting a cabinet position would force her to give up her seat in parliament and relinquish authority of the NLD, which swept into power in November’s decisive elections.
Htin Kyaw will submit the names of the new ministers to parliament on Tuesday, and reveal more of how Suu Kyi intends to run the new government.
Suu Kyi is only the woman among the nominees.
“A ministry of ethnic affairs is of vital importance for the future of the union, which needs peace, development and sustainability”, he said.
Ms Suu Kyi spent much of her time between 1989 and 2010 in some form of detention because of her efforts to bring democracy to military-ruled Myanmar – a fact that made her an worldwide symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.
One of the nominated ministers Thein Swe, a former general and one of two listed in the cabinet from the USDP, told reporters in the capital Naypyidaw that he would “work together” with the new government “for the national interest”.
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The military still holds strong political sway under a charter that reserves a quarter of parliament seats for unelected soldiers and grants the army chief direct control over three key ministries; home affairs, border affairs and defence.
