April 2 (Reuters) – Myanmar’s parliament will hold a bicameral vote to elect a president on Friday, house speaker Aung Lin Dwe said on Thursday, with the country’s former military chief and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing in the running for the position.
The 69-year-old general, who led a 2021 coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered a civil war, stepped down as Myanmar’s top military commander on Monday, after 15 years in the position.
On the same day, a member of Myanmar’s lower house of parliament nominated him as a vice presidential candidate, alongside two other contenders put forward by the upper house and a block of military representatives in parliament.
A joint meeting of both houses, including the military-appointed lawmakers, will be held at 10.00 a.m. local time (0330 GMT) on Friday to elect a president from among those three vice presidential candidates.
“The three candidates selected by their respective groups meet the necessary qualifications,” Aung Lin Dwe said, according to parliamentary proceedings broadcast on state media.
The move follows a controversial election held in December and January that was won by a military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party but widely derided as a sham by the United Nations and many Western countries.
(Reporting by Reuters staff, Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by David Stanway)
