House speaker running for president in 2015 polls
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Yangon - Shwe Mann, the speaker of the lower house of Myanmar's parliament, received his party's endorsement as candidate for 2015 presidential elections Tuesday, a move that will likely pit him against democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We agree to name the chairman as president if we win a majority in the 2015 general election," said Htay Oo, secretary of the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP.) And we believe we will win in the 2015 election," he added.
Shwe Mann, 65, formerly a senior member of the brutal junta that ruled Myanmar between 1988 to 2010, announced his intention to run for the presidency during a visit to Washington on Monday, according to news reports.
His announcement comes days after opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi went public with her own ambitions to become president.
"I want to run for president," Suu Kyi said while attending the World Economic Forum in East Asia, in Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, last week. "Let's be open: If I pretended I didn't want to, I would not be honest."
Under the current constitution passed by the military junta in2008, Suu Kyi cannot become president because she was once married to a foreigner.
She said the constitution would have to be amended, a project upon which her party, the National League for Democracy, was working.
Suu Kyi, 67, spent 15 years detained at her home in Yangon during the period of rule by the junta that ended in 2011. She was freed after elections in late 2010.
In the April 2012 by-election, she and 42 other members of her NLD won 43 out of 45 contested seats, soundly trouncing the USDP.
Suu Kyi has been sitting in parliament since June last year, where she has cultivated good working relationships with both Shwe Mann and President Thein Sein.
Both former military men are seen as the chief reformers in the current regime. Thein Sein has indicated he wants to retire once his term is up.
The constitution guarantees the military 25 per cent of the legislative seats, assuring the military veto power over all legislation and a solid grip on parliament.
