Suu Kyi Aide Sworn In As Myanmar President In Historic Power Shift
MYANMAR– Aung San Suu Kyi(photo), 70, is barred from becoming president by the junta-scripted constitution but has declared that she will steer the government anyway, taking on a clutch of cabinet positions including that of foreign minister.
However a close aide to Suu Kyi was sworn in as Myanmar’s president on Wednesday, a role that will see him act as a proxy for the pro-democracy figurehead and carry the hopes of a nation emerging from military rule.
Htin Kyaw takes power from former general Thein Sein who has helmed far-reaching reforms since 2011.
The handover at the junta-built parliament in the capital Naypyidaw marks the final act of 
a prolonged transition since Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party swept the November elections.
a prolonged transition since Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party swept the November elections.
The NLD won 80% of parliamentary seats, handing them a massive public mandate to rule after generations of army domination.
Wearing a collarless shirt in the NLD’s peach-coloured parliamentary colours, the bespectacled Htin Kyaw pledged to 
be “faithful to the people of the republic of the union of Myanmar”.
be “faithful to the people of the republic of the union of Myanmar”.
Htin Kyaw is known among political commentators as a party insider with close ties to Suu Kyi going back many decades, including as one of her classmates at high school in Yangon.
Born in 1946, the 69-year-old is the son of a famous poet and writer, Min Thu Wun, who ran as an NLD candidate in the 1990 elections.Htin Kyaw is married to NLD politician Su Su Lwin, whose father U Lwin is one of the party's founding members.He studied economics at the University of Yangon and went on to study computer science.He had a stint as a government employee while Myanmar was under military rule but was jailed in 2000 after he tested the limits of Suu Kyi's house arrest at the time.Until his election, Htin Kyaw was the head of the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity named after Aung Sang Suu Kyi's mother.
Source:Al Jazeera, Agencies
MYANMAR REJECTS TALKS ON ETHNIC VIOLENCE?
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Myanmar has rejected an offer by the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations to open talks aimed at quelling deadly communal violence there,
according to the regional bloc's chief.
Surin Pitsuwan (photo above) said on Tuesday he proposed setting up tripartite
talks between ASEAN, the UN and Myanmar's government to prevent the
violence from having a broader regional impact.
But he said Myanmar turned down the offer to discuss the bloodshed in
the western Rakhine state that has led to about 180 deaths since June.
The bloodshed has pitted Buddhists against minority Rohingya Muslims.
"Myanmar believes it is their internal matter, but your internal
matter could be ours the next day if you are not
careful," Surin, ASEAN's secretary-general, said after delivering a
speech at a forum in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Fresh fighting in Rakhine this month resulted in another 88 people
being killed and added to the thousands of homes torched, with tens of
thousands of Rohingya Muslims now living in overcrowded camps.
SUU KYI'S VICTORY: A BOOST FOR OPPOSITION, A WARNING FOR MALAYSIAN PM?
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - As more news coming out from Myanmar indicate that pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party had won a string of by-elections held over the weekend, Malaysia's opposition has begun celebrating the start of what they see as the eventual fall of yet another authoritarian regime in Southeast Asia."Congratulations to the voice of freedom and justice," tweeted Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, the first to laud Suu Kyi with whom he has often been compared as the region's two best-known democracy fighters.
Indeed, whether or not Myanmar's military junta will renege on the NLD's stunning victory as it did in 1990, Suu Kyi's landslide win is already a huge morale booster for the reformist Anwar and his Pakatan Rakyat coalition as they gear up for landmark polls that may see the fall of the Umno-BN after 55 years of ham-fisted rule.
Apart from Indonesia, and the Philippines, the rest of Southeast Asia are basically pseudo-democracies. Even Singapore, while qualified to be an OECD nation, is heavily lagging in terms of democratic rights with the government actively policing the actions and even the thoughts of its society. The only saving grace is the relative lack of corruption in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's government.
However, the same cannot be said for his Malaysian counterpart, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has steered the country into its worst ever quagmire of corruption and graft. Using a dangerous cocktail of racism and religious bigotry, Najib is now pinning his last hopes on scaring the Malay electorate - the biggest in the country - into rejecting Anwar and Pakatan in nationwide polls expected to be held later this year.
But like the Myanmar people, the Malaysian folk are expected to plumb for change and reform. More than RM1 trillion of taxpayers' money has been illegally siphoned out of the country due to corrupt officials since 2000, and Najib's own department has forecast national bankruptcy by 2019 if structural reforms are not implemented to cut record-high national debt.- "From what happened in Myanmar in the past, it may be premature but we pray and hope that the junta will respect the wishes of the Myanmar people and recognize the NLD victories. The same goes for Malaysia.
Najib went to Myanmar last week, just before the elections and Malaysia also sent election monitors to watch the polls. We hope Najib will also respect democracy in his own country and allow election monitors to come here and observe our polls," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.- There are grave worries that Najib, the only Malaysian PM ever to be accused by the Washington Post of being a "champion of doubletalk", will resort to unprecedented cheating to keep the Pakatan at bay.
It is indeed ironic that he sent Malaysian observers to the Myanmar ballot but refused to allow foreign watchdog bodies to observe the local polls.There is even fear that Najib may stir up up riots so as to implement emergency or military rule in the event of electoral defeat. So far, Najib and his Umno-BN have refused to acknowledge a two-party system, although the Pakatan swept 5 out of 13 states in the 2008 election and won 52% of the popular vote.
VISITORS GEOFLAGS SINCE AUGUST 26, 2009
