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Myanmar’s presidential election date brought forward to March 10

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The Myanmar Parliament has decided to bring forward the presidential election from March 17 to March 10, a post the leader of the democratic movement, Aung San Suu Kyi will not be able to contest for, reported the media Tuesday.

The new head of State will be elected from among three candidates, two of whom will be nominated by each of the houses that make up the Parliament, and a third nomination will come from the Army, in accordance with the Constitution approved by the last military junta that ruled the Southeast Asian country.

The two losing candidates will be named vicepresidents of the new government, which will be constituted on the basis of proposals by the new president, replacing the current government office holders under outgoing president Thein Sein, before April 1.

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Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, enjoys sufficient majority in the parliament, after a landslide victory in November’s general elections, to determine the future head of State.

The Nobel peace laureate, however, cannot hold the post as a provision in the Constitution bars anyone with foreign family members from the post, and Suu Kyi is the widow of a British citizen and her two sons hold British passports.

The president of the Parliament announced the bringing forward of the election date following several weeks of talks between the NLD and the military.

“We took time in the hope that we could negotiate with the military to suspend section 59(f),” an NLD leader told the newspaper Myanmar Times.

“But now we accept that this can’t happen so we have given up on this plan. We’re reverting to our previous plan, which was to nominate a proxy president instead of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” he added.

According to the same newspaper, Suu Kyi will assume charge of the foreign ministry in the new government, allowing her to participate in the National Defense and Security Council.

Myanmar was ruled by military generals from 1962 till 2011, when the last military junta dissolved after transferring power to an allied civil government, which set into motion a process of political, economic and social reforms.