Who is Htin Kyaw?
That was the question on everybody’s lips this week as the National League for Democracy yesterday announced its little-known nominee for president, in lieu of Suu Kyi, who is barred from the role on account of her British sons.
The 69-year-old was a fairly obscure character before he was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. MPs will vote from among several candidates next week but he is the favorite.
In true NLD style, he has not said a word and there has been no press conference. NLD spokespeople did not make themselves available and a meeting between Suu Kyi and MPs yesterday was held behind closed doors. As the Irrawaddy has reported, the party did not release an official biography until about 6pm Myanmar time yesterday.
So, amid the scrambles of media deadlines, many mistakes were made about Htin Kyaw’s identity yesterday.
The most egregious in the eyes of NLD supporters was the misidentification of the experienced politician as a ‘driver’ by several major media outlets.
Colleagues told the Irrawaddy that he sometimes drove members of the party as a favor. As you do.
CNN took the worst of the flak. In addition to going with the ‘driver’ angle, they identified Htin Kyaw as a co-founder of the NLD. It was his father-in-law.
They also ran with a photo of an entirely different Htin Kyaw – a jailed rights activist. Oops.
Numerous outlets (including us, sorry) wrote that he studied at Oxford when in fact he was at the University of London.
So who is the man likely to become Myanmar’s next president? Here’s what we know, according to a resume posted to Facebook by Kay Neyin, an NLD information officer:
- He was born in July, 1946.
- He went to school with Aung San Suu Kyi in Dagon township.
- He worked as a university teacher, before going to study at the University of London Institute of Computer Science.
- He joined the Ministry of Industry in 1975, and then, five years later, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- He later studied at the Arthur D Little School of Management in Massachusetts.
- He resigned from the government in 1992 and now works as a director at the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, named for Suu Kyi’s mother.
- He’s tall – and people like him for that.
