Myanmar takes momentous step with new president, no change for Rohingyas

Myanmar took a momentous step Wednesday as a trusted aide to ruling-party leader Aung Suu Kyi took over as the country's president, officially ending more than 50 years of the military's control over government. In a day full of ceremony and symbolism, Htin Kyaw was sworn in along with his two vice presidents and 18 Cabinet ministers. Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate and face of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, takes on a prominent role as the country's new foreign minister and the head of three other ministries.

"The Union Parliament has elected me as president, which is a historic moment for this country," Htin Kyaw, 70, said in a speech after being sworn in. He pledged to work toward national reconciliation, strive for peace with warring ethnic rebels and improving the lives of Myanmar's 54 million people. While it was a historic day for this impoverished Southeast Asian country, democracy remains incomplete. The military retains considerable power in the government and parliament, and the president himself will play second fiddle to Suu Kyi. She cannot be president because of a constitutional manipulation engineered by the military, and has repeatedly said she will run the country from behind the scenes. "I am very happy that we have a president who represents people," said Mar Thin, a 50-year-old street cleaner. She said she used to own 70 acres of land that she and her sister inherited from their father before the military kicked them out and appropriated the land for the defense ministry. "I hope that the new government can solve the land confiscation problem and let us own our land as farmers. All we want is enough food, and to live without fear. I hope that President Htin Kyaw will do that for us because Daw Suu promised us a lot of things, and we love her too," Mar Thin said, using an affectionate term for Suu Kyi.

Htin Kyaw's swearing-in was held in an austere hall of parliament, with lawmakers dressed in traditional costume. A few hours later, outgoing President Thein Sein shook hands with his successor and handed him a letter and a golden sash, officially transferring power. It was Suu Kyi who led her National League for Democracy party to a landslide win in November elections, ushering in Myanmar's first civilian government after 54 years of direct and indirect military rule. Suu Kyi endured decades of house arrest and harassment by military rulers without ever giving up on her nonviolent campaign to unseat them. The constitutional clause that denied her the presidency excludes anyone from the position who has a foreign spouse or child. Suu Kyi's two sons are British, as was her late husband. The clause is widely seen as having been written by the military with Suu Kyi in mind.

The constitution, drafted by the former junta, reserves 25 percent of the seats in parliament for military officers, guaranteeing that no government can amend the constitution without its approval. The military also heads the Home Ministry, the Border Affairs Ministry and the Defense Ministry, which gives it control over the corrections department, ensuring that the release of political prisoners is its decision to make. The military also ensured that one of Htin Kyaw's two vice presidents is a former general, Myint Swe, a close ally of former junta leader Than Shwe. Myint Swe remains on a U.S. Treasury Department blacklist that bars American companies from doing business with several tycoons and senior military figures connected with the former junta.

Despite her inability to become president, Suu Kyi's entry into the government is a remarkable turn of fortune not only for her, but also for the country, which had been under iron-fisted military rule for decades beginning in 1962. The junta kept Myanmar in isolation and economic stagnation while refusing to listen to international counsel or homegrown demands for democracy. Suu Kyi came to prominence in 1988, when popular protests were building up. The junta crushed the protests, which had turned into anti-government riots, killing thousands of people and placing Suu Kyi under house arrest in 1989. The junta called elections in 1990, but refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, or NLD, won overwhelmingly. Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year later while under house arrest. The junta finally started loosening its grip on power in 2010, allowing elections that were won by a military-allied party after the NLD boycotted the polls as unfair. Thein Sein, a former general, was installed as president for a five-year term that started March 30, 2011, and ended Wednesday.

However, Myanmar's stance towards ethnic Rohingya Muslims is unlikely to change as Muslims have been barred from even voting and Suu Kyi reacted negatively for being interviewed by a Muslim BBC correspondent last week. The Rohingyas are not recognized as one of the 134 official ethnicities of Myanmar because authorities view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. They are subjected to forced labor, have no rights to own property and are heavily oppressed under the Burmese dictatorship. They have no permission to leave the camps built for them, have no source of income and have to rely on the World Food Program to survive. The U.N. considers Rohingyas to be one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, in the past three years, over 120,000 Rohingyas have boarded ships to flee abroad. Some 25,000 migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh in the first quarter of 2015. Between 40-60 percent of the 25,000 are thought to originate from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine. The unrest in Myanmar sparked in 2012 killed thousands of Muslims, about 140,000 stateless Rohingyas were placed in internal displacement camps due to the increasing violent attacks on them.