U Htin Kyaw, elected by the group of presidential electoral college of the House of Representatives (Lower House), won against Sa Mauk Kham, nominated by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) by a vote of 274-29.
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Meanwhile, a vote is underway in the upper house to choose the second finalist.
Under Myanmar’s constitution, the upper and lower houses of parliament and the military, which holds a quarter of unelected seats, each nominate a candidate.
Htin Kyaw, a close adviser to Suu Kyi, is the NLD’s nominee from the lower house, making him a favourite to become president in a vote expected next week.
Htin Kyaw will now go up against two other candidates, an ethnic Chin MP Henry Van Theu nominated by the NLD in the upper house, and one yet-to-be-named candidate chosen by the army, which still controls a significant slice of the government.
When her party trounced the competition in last fall’s elections, Suu Kyi said she would be “above the president”. With Suu Kyi insisting that she would nonetheless remain “above the presidency”, the discussion over the past few months has shifted to who she might tap from within the NLD to serve as an effective proxy president, with her still wielding considerable power in practice.
Now, he is the favoured presidential candidate of Myanmar’s ruling party, on course to become the country’s first head of state who is not a former top-ranking member of the military since the 1960s. “He has experience, he’s fair and he’s a real gentleman so our country’s future will be very good”, said Kyaw Win Maung, an NLD lawmaker. In this case, she would have a direct vote in the Council – it now favors the military which would have six members as opposed to five NLD representatives – instead of only influencing the president and attending meetings.
The outcome of the negotiations was not known until Thursday when the names of the loyalists were announced, signalling the end, at least for now, of Suu Kyi’s longtime ambition to be Myanmar’s leader.
Reuters also reports that bickering between the military and in-coming government has extended beyond the constitution and power sharing to small details such as parking slots at the handover ceremony and equipment removed from offices by the outgoing government staff.
Htin Kyaw runs a charity founded by Suu Kyi and has been a trusted member of her inner circle since the mid-1990s. She called it a “first step toward realizing the expectations and desires of the people who overwhelmingly supported the National League for Democracy in the elections”.
Htin Kyaw, soft-spoken and often sporting a white traditional Burmese jacket, can be seen over the years in a smattering of photographs for which he, inevitably, was never the lens’ focus.
Suu Kyi has yet to say. His father-in-law, a former army colonel, was a co-founder of the NLD.
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Born in 1946, Htin Kyaw is a prominent writer who graduated from Oxford University in 1972. Ceding that point Thursday, Suu Kyi wrote an apology to her supporters. “I believe the people will be happy about the results”, she said.
