Myanmar parliament announces cabinet member nominees

Myanmar's Union Parliament on Tuesday announced 18 nominees for ministers including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi submitted by President-elect U Htin Kyaw.

Parliament is scheduled to continue the nomination process for respective ministries on Thursday if there is no objection from the MPs for the nominees until 1 p.m. Wednesday.

U Htin Kyaw submitted to the Union Parliament his proposal of government reformation on March 17, in which some of the ministries are to be combined into one, such as the merging of seven ministries at the President's Office to one and merging of closely identical ministries to one also.

Of the designated 21 ministries, three ministries of defence, border and home affairs are to be run by the military with related ministers to be named by it under the constitution.

One new ministry, which is the ministry of ethnic affairs, is added to the 21 ministries, indicating that the new government attaches importance to ethnic affairs which are to be separately dealt with to boost national reconciliation.

U Htin Kyaw of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the presidential race last week with the highest number of 360 votes against two other presidential candidates.

The new government is initially set to be sworn in on March 30 and will come to power on April 1.