Myanmar’s influential Speaker Thura Shwe Mann has been removed from the leadership of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in a dramatic move which saw armed police swooping on the headquarters of the party in Naypyitaw late on Wednesday night and sealing off the premises.
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Shwe Mann has been a presidential hopeful in the past, Reuters reports, but despite Thein Sein earlier insisting that he wouldn’t serve a second term, the president now appears to want to remain in office.
Thein Sein agreed to Shwe Mann’s removal from his party role, Zaw Htay of the President’s Office told AFP.
The government was working “to stabilise public order”, he added, without giving details. He was replaced by the party’s vice chairman, Htay Oo.
President Thein Sein introduced reforms including freeing hundreds of prisoners and relaxing media censorship. “What I do know is that the president has transferred the position of joint-chairmanship [of the party] to U Htay Oo”.
The Union party will not contest 32 seats – two in the upper house, 10 in the lower house and 20 in division and state parliaments – in certain constituencies of special autonomous regions where it has reached agreements with local parties not to run against them, said union party general secretary Maung Maung Thein.
Maung Maung Thein told DVB from Nya Pyi Taw he had been informed that he was no longer needed, despite Thein Sein holding an emergency meeting to address “urgent issues” within the party.
Toe Naing Mann, the speaker’s son, said “so-called guards” were also at his father’s residence in the capital.
Myanmar’s president is huddling with government ministers Thursday amid an apparent purge of the leadership of the country’s governing party.
About half a dozen police were at the gate of the party?s vast headquarters early Thursday, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
Political tensions are seething ahead of the country’s planned November 8 polls, which many hope will be the freest in decades.
A source close to Suu Kyi confirmed she had cancelled a planned weekend trip.
Shwe Mann has built ties with Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has called repeatedly for the military to withdraw from politics, and he supported an attempt in parliament in June to amend the constitution to limit the military’s political role.
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“We did not expect this”. There were some disagreement inside the party, but that’s all.
