U Win Myint elected as Myanmar's new president: parliament

NAY PYI TAW - U Win Myint, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was elected as Myanmar's new president in the presidential run on Wednesday, the Union Parliament announced.

U Win Myint became the country's 10th president since 1948.

The presidential run was hosted by the Union Parliament to fill the presidency vacancy left by U Htin Kyaw, who announced resignation last week, citing health as reason.

The presidential election was contested among three vice presidents, namely U Myint Swe, U Henry Van Thio and U Win Myint.

U Win Myint won the election with 403 votes as a total of 636 MPs cast their votes in the Union Parliament. Of the votes cast, four were cancelled.

U Myint Swe won 211 votes and U Henry Van Thio gained 18 votes.

In the election, U Myint Swe and U Henry Van Thio remained as the first and second vice president respectively, according to their votes received.

The parliament is expected to announce the date of the swearing-in to office of the elected president and two vice presidents on Thursday when the parliament session continues.

U Win Myint resigned from speaker of the House of Representatives (Lower House) last week but was re-elected as vice president and nominated as a candidate for the presidential election.

U Win Myint, a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), was elected earlier as a parliament member to the House of Representatives from Pathein constituency in the 2012 by-election and was again so elected to the same house from Tammwe constituency in the 2015 general election. He became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2016.

The current parliament and government began their five-year terms from February and April 2016 respectively under the leadership of the ruling NLD which won the absolute majority of the parliamentary seats in the Nov 8 general elections in 2015.