The chairman of Myanmar's parliament says the nominees for the country's next president and two vice presidents will be known on March 17.
Parliament chairman Man Win Khine announced on Monday the upper house, the lower House and the military will have to select one candidate each for the three posts on March 17.
Parliament will then take a vote and the person with the largest number of votes will become president, and the other two will be vice presidents.
Given that democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party has a majority in both houses of parliament, it is certain to get the president's post.
But it remains unclear if Suu Kyi herself will be able to become president, although there are growing signs that her talks with the military to remove a constitutional hurdle blocking her path can be completed by March 17.
With a majority in both houses of parliament, it is certain to also get one vice president's post. The new president will then take office on April 1 after the current president's term expires on March 31.
The NLD won a landslide victory in the November 8 general elections. But Suu Kyi is barred from becoming president because of the Constitution's Article 59 (f), which says anyone with a foreign spouse or children cannot hold the executive office. Suu Kyi's late husband was British as are her two sons.
But she has been negotiating with commander-in-chief General Min Aung Hlaing on having the clause suspended.
The clause can be legally scrapped only through a 75 per cent plus one vote in parliament. The military holds 25 per cent of the nominated seats in parliament, which means the NLD cannot scrap the clause on its own.
However, the clause can be suspended by a simple majority, but because all this is uncharted territory nobody is sure if that would be allowed.
Share
