Myanmar elects Aung San Suu Kyi confidante U Win Myint as new president

The Myanmar parliament on Wednesday elected the country's lower house speaker and legislator U Win Myint as the new president.

Myint replaces U Htin Kyaw, Myanmar's first democratically elected president, who resigned last week amid concerns about his health over the last few months. The former is a lawyer by profession, Myanmar Times reported.

The newly sworn president is a member of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which came into power with a brute majority in March 2016, ending decades of military dictatorial rule.

Myint is considered a trusted confidant of Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is legally barred from holding the post of the president by the military-drafted constitution.

In 1981, he became a senior lawyer in the Yangon high court and went on to become the lawyer of Myanmar's top court within a few years.

Myint was first elected to the parliament in 1990, but was denied a seat by the military. He was however, successful in the 2012 by-elections and 2015 general elections.

His appointment as the new president comes at a time, when the Suu Kyi administration has been under massive pressure from the international community in handling the Rohingya crisis and the slow implementation of political and economic reforms.