ASIA/MYANMAR - A Christian nominated as vice presidential candidate

Friday, 11 March 2016 politics   religious minorities  

Yangon (Agenzia Fides) – Lawyer Henry Van Thio, a 57-year-old ethnic Chin minority from the Pentecostal Church, has been nominated as a vice presidential candidate. Chosen by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, the lawyer is expected to be one of two vice presidents in Myanmar, while the Parliamentary Assembly is preparing to elect the country’s president and its vices.
The choice of having a minority ethnic as a vice president is a gesture promoted by the League, as a symbol of national reconciliation. Myanmar's minority ethnic groups make up a third of the country's people. As part of that, Christians heavily populate Myanmar.
The National League for Democracy has also nominated U Htin Kyaw, a 70-year-old Burmese to be the country's president.
Htin Kyaw, is among the co-founders of the National League of Democracy. The Constitution written in 2008, at the time of the government of the military junta, prohibits Aung Suu Kyi, with an explicit article, from becoming president because she married a foreigner and their children are not Burmese citizens. In recent days the suspension of this clause had been hypothesized. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 11/03/2016)


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