YANGON, Myanmar — The country’s newly elected parliament named a key figure in the long-ruling military junta as president Friday, ensuring that the first civilian government in decades will be dominated by the army, which has brutally suppressed dissent.
The appointment of Thein Sein, 65, was the latest step in Myanmar’s self-declared transition to democracy following elections in November. But critics, including recently freed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have slammed the process as a sham aimed at cementing military rule.
“This is not surprising. It is what we had expected,” Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi told reporters Friday.
Suu Kyi’s party won the previous elections in 1990 but was blocked at the time from taking power by the military. The party boycotted November’s vote, calling it unfair.
Suu Kyi spent 15 of the past 21 years in prison or under house arrest and was released late last year after the vote was held.
The military’s delegates in parliament and their civilian allies hold an 80 percent majority in the new legislature, which hand-picked the president from a pool of three vice presidents named Thursday. Sein is the most prominent of the three and was seen as a shoo-in for the head of government.
An upper-house lawmaker, Khin Shwe, contacted as he left the parliament, said Sein won 408 out of 659 votes.
The future role of junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who has wielded absolute power since 1992, remains unclear. But he is expected to remain a dominant force.
Sein is a former general who served as prime minister from October 2007 and now heads the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which won a huge majority in November’s general elections. He also has an image as a “clean” soldier, not engaged in corruption. Still, as prime minister and the fourth-ranking military leader in the junta, Sein previously did not have much decision-making power.
