Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing appointed president after ‘sham’ election | Myanmar
Min Aung Hlaing, the military general who plunged Myanmar into conflict and economic chaos when he came to power in a 2021 coup, was appointed president months after widely condemned sham elections.
Min Aung Hlaing, wanted by the international criminal court prosecutor for crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya Muslim minority, was elected president by lawmakers on Friday. Myanmar’s parliament is dominated by the pro-military party, which won a landslide in one-sided elections earlier this year.
Analysts say Min Aung Hlaing has long wanted the role, but his ambition has been dashed for years due to the electoral success of the hugely popular Aung San Suu Kyi.
But the former de facto leader no longer poses a threat. The 80-year-old man has been detained since the 2021 coup that ousted his government from power. His party was banned from participating in the last elections, which were held in three phases from December to January.
choice, which soldier’s deputy The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which won by a landslide, was widely condemned as a fraud trying to give military rule a veneer of legitimacy. Changes in leadership are not expected to ease the political crisis or the ongoing deadly conflict across the country.
Min Aung Hlaing is already Myanmar’s acting president and will likely appoint loyalists to key positions, the International Crisis Group said in its latest analysis.
“He won’t trust anyone [enough] take orders from [them] Yanghee Lee, the former special rapporteur on Myanmar, added that Min Aung Hlaing was seen as a paranoid, suspicious person.
The 69-year-old general was born to a family from Dawei in south-eastern Myanmar. He studied law at university in Yangon but longed to join the army, and on his third try was accepted into the Defense Services Academy, the country’s elite institution for training officers.
Myanmar’s military has been likened to a state within a state, isolated from the rest of society with its own banks, companies, news outlets and hospitals. It sees itself as the protectorate of Myanmar as the Buddhist Bamar nation – Bamar refers to the majority ethnic group.
He was appointed commander-in-chief in 2011, but took on the post at a time when Myanmar was undergoing a delicate transition to democracy.
The military remained extremely powerful during this period, even after Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in 2015. Under the military’s “disciplined democracy” model, the military was given a quarter of the seats in parliament and the power to appoint key cabinet positions.
The uneasy power-sharing arrangement fell apart after the 2020 election, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD also won by a landslide. Min Aung Hlaing accused his party of widespread voter fraud without evidence and seized power on February 1, 2021. The coup triggered mass protests that turned into civil war.
Min Aung Hlaing is accused of presiding over repeated atrocities and human rights violations. In 2009, his troops, who oversaw operations in border areas in the northeast, were accused of driving tens of thousands of ethnic minority people from their homes. Such brutality would be repeated on an even larger scale in 2017 in the violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state, the center of the genocide trial in The Hague.
UN inspectors since the coup Min Aung blamed Haling’s regime He describes crimes such as indiscriminate airstrikes that kill civilians, “mass murder of detainees, mutilation and desecration of corpses, rape, and deliberate burning of entire villages” as “manifestations of an organizational policy.”
Myanmar denies genocide charges and the military says its post-coup operations target terrorists it accuses of destabilizing the country.
In recent months, Min Aung Hlaing has stepped up his international trips, trying to escape his international pariah status.
His diplomatic style was ridiculed by his critics; While praising Vladimir Putin, especially during his visit to Moscow last year, he said that the friendship between Myanmar and Russia was prophesied by Buddha thousands of years ago, and that the Russian President was a “mouse king” in his previous life. It is unclear whether Putin understood this vague reference.
Richard Horsey, a senior Myanmar adviser at Crisis Group, said the junta leader presented himself as a politician rather than a “soldier’s soldier” and was often photographed inspecting infrastructure and factories rather than visiting the front lines, even amid post-coup fighting. “It has long been known that he has coveted the presidency,” Horsey added.
Horsey added that Min Aung Hlaing was also an extremely superstitious person and was willing to present himself as a deeply religious person. He frequently commissioned and renovated pagodas and religious sites, including the giant Buddha statue in the capital Nay Pyi Taw.
“I don’t think you see it that way [being in] “It conflicts with his role as a ruthless leader,” Horsey said.
Min Aung Hlaing is unable to travel to large parts of Myanmar that have been seized by opposition groups or are in the midst of conflict.
However, with the support of ally China, the junta chief is likely hoping the latest elections will enable him to reverse his isolated status abroad and reassure pro-military voices who have criticized his failure to suppress dissent since the coup.
