[by:www.21voa.com]
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[00:00.60]Myanmar's parliament has elected Htin Kyaw as the country's next president.
[00:07.00]The retired bureaucrat from the National League for Democracy, or NLD,
[00:12.80]won 360 of the 652 votes in a joint meeting of the legislature.
[00:21.28]Htin Kyaw is not a member of parliament,
[00:25.12]but he is a close ally of NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
[00:31.88]The pro-democracy leader was among the first to vote in Tuesday's historic election.
[00:40.12]Aung San Suu Kyi made no comment to reporters after the vote.
[00:45.80]The Nobel Prize winner is popular with most citizens of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
[00:53.44]But she is barred by the constitution from becoming president
[00:58.72]because both of her sons have foreign citizenship.
[01:03.88]A U.S. State Department official said
[01:07.16]the constitutional ban did not agree with basic democratic ideas.
[01:13.57]"We remain concerned about certain provisions in Burma's constitution
[01:19.68]that contradict fundamental democratic principles
[01:23.60]and prevent the people of Burma
[01:25.96]from voting for the leaders of their choice," said the official.
[01:30.68]"The people of Burma should be able to decide whether and when
[01:36.08]to amend the country's constitution to alter or remove these provisions."
[01:44.44]Aung San Suu Kyi has declared she will hold power over the president,
[01:50.56]whom she has known since primary school.
[01:54.64]However, the military will remain powerful in the new government
[01:59.72]because it automatically holds one quarter of the parliamentary seats.
[02:05.68]The military also will control several important ministries.
[02:12.12]Officials tried to prevent reporters from interviewing or videotaping
[02:18.24]the military's members of parliament as they registered for the joint session.
[02:25.00]"When the NLD forms a government,
[02:27.60]we will need to work together with them,"
[02:30.56]an army brigadier general, who declined to give his name, told VOA.
[02:36.92]The army's candidate for president, General Myint Swe,
[02:42.68]who placed second, will become the first vice president.
[02:47.64]The general, however, remains on a U.S. government blacklist,
[02:52.36]and Americans are barred with doing business with him.
[02:57.20]The NLD's Henry Van Thio, a Christian from Chin state,
[03:03.40]finished third in Tuesday's voting and will become second vice president.
[03:10.80]After the vote on Tuesday,
[03:13.16]lawmakers from both the NLD
[03:16.00]and the now opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)
[03:21.92]stressed the need to work together.
[03:26.28]However, analysts and some members of the NLD have expressed concern.
[03:32.74]They fear the influence of the generals
[03:35.84]will mean corruption will continue to be a problem in Myanmar.
[03:41.12]Myanmar is a mainly Buddhist country of more than 55 million people.
[03:48.72]The country has suffered civil war or ethnic conflict
[03:52.92]for many of the years since the end of British colonial rule in 1948.
[04:00.44]There has been progress in negotiating peace deals with different groups
[04:06.96]since a nominally civilian government took power in 2011.
[04:14.00]But low-intensity conflicts continue between Myanmar's army
[04:19.32]and a number of armed ethnic minority groups.
[04:24.40]The new government will take office on April 1.
[04:30.00]I'm Mario Ritter.
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