Al Jazeera News :Politicians in Myanmar have begun the process of choosing a new president, following decades of military rule.Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a crushing electoral victory last year, on Thursday nominated her close ally Htin Kyaw for the presidency.Aung San Suu Kyi, a hugely popular democracy icon and Nobel laureate, has vowed to rule “above” the president, despite being barred from top office by the army-scripted constitution, As the ruling party’s favoured presidential candidate, Htin Kyaw is now on course to become the country’s first head of state in decades who is not a former top-ranking member of the military.Htin Kyaw runs the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity to assist people in Myanmar’s poorest areas founded by Aung San Suu Kyi, and has from time to time served as her driver.Three presidential candidates will be nominated on Thursday – one by the lower house of parliament, one by the upper house, and one by the military bloc. The constitution gives the armed forces a quarter of seats in both houses.Htin Kyaw, an Oxford graduate with a degree in economics, was nominated from the lower house.
