NLD elects alleged drug lord as lower house speaker

Myanmar’s lower house of parliament has elected independent lawmaker T Khun Myat as its new speaker following the resignation yesterday of former speaker Win Myint. Win Myint is expected to be nominated by the house to replace outgoing president Htin Kyaw.

The ascension of T Khun Myat to the influential speaker post may revive interest in his personal background. The ethnic Kachin representing Shan State’s Kutkai Township is widely reputed to have commanded a paramilitary group that operated under the Myanmar army between 1990 and 2010 and has been accused of drug smuggling and money laundering.

According to the Shan Herald Agency for News, the MP was a shareholder in the Myanmar Mayflower Bank, which was shut down for its alleged involvement in drug-related money laundering.

The allegations against T Khun Myat have not previously impeded his appointments and elections to powerful government positions or his participation in high-level parliamentary delegations in the US, India, and Japan.

Nonetheless, the MP has rebutted the allegations, telling the Ladies News Journal in Jan. 2016: “I don’t want to dig the past. There are many drug factories that we destroyed. I don’t want to tell unnecessary things which both the military and the department do not want to. We cannot reply to every bit of nonsense. If they have evidence, then just put it on the table.”

T Khun Myat previously served as the lower house’s deputy speaker. He was elected in 2015 as a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) but was purged from the party along with former USDP chairman Shwe Mann and his allies in April 2016.

USDP lawmaker Thaung Aye also vied for the post of speaker today but was defeated by the independent candidate in the NLD-dominated chamber in a vote of 280 to 141.

This week’s flurry of reshufflings was kicked off yesterday morning by the resignation of former president Htin Kyaw. Former lower house speaker Win Myint resigned from parliament immediately after that, leaving his former post open to T Khun Myat.

Win Myint is expected to run against vice presidents Myint Swe and Henry Van Thio in a parliamentary vote that will decide Myanmar’s next president. If the vote breaks down along the same lines as it did in 2015, Win Myint will take the presidency.