Thein Nyunt (politician)

Thein Nyunt (Burmese: သိန်းညွန့်; born 26 December 1944 or 20 November 1944^[2]) is a Burmese lawyer, columnist, and politician.^[3] He served on Myanmar's State Administration Council from 2021 to 2023. A former member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), he founded the New National Democracy Party and co-founded the National Democratic Force (NDF) after splitting from the NLD. Thein Nyunt served as an MP for the Pyithu Hluttaw, representing Thingangyun Township, from 2011 to 2016.

Thein Nyunt
သိန်းညွန့်
Member of the State Administration Council
In office 2 February 2021 – 1 February 2023[1]
Member of the Pyithu Hluttaw
In office 30 March 2011 – 30 March 2016
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Shwe Hla Win
Constituency	Thingangyun Township
Personal details
Born	26 December 1944 (1944-12-26) (age 79) or 20 November 1944 (1944-11-20) (age 79) Kawkareik, Burma
Nationality	Burmese
Political party	New National Democracy Party
Other political affiliations	National League for Democracy (1990–2010) National Democratic Force (2010–2011)
Children	Nay Aung
Occupation	Politician lawyer columnist

Political career

Thein Nyunt won a parliamentary seat in the 1990 Myanmar general election, representing Thingangyun Township in Yangon.^[4] Thein Nyunt served as a member of the National League for Democracy's Central Executive Committee.

In the lead-up to the 2010 Myanmar general election, Thein Nyunt left the NLD to co-found the National Democratic Force, a new political party, with Khin Maung Swe.^[5] The NDF contested the 2010 election, but Thein Nyunt later resigned due to internal party funding problems and ran as an independent. He won a Pyithu Hluttaw seat, representing Thingangyun Township.^[5] In July 2011, he announced that he had formed a new political party, the New National Democratic Party (NNDP), to contest the 2015 Myanmar general election.^[5] He ultimately lost the race to Shwe Hla Win, a member of the NLD.^[6]

In advance of the 2020 Myanmar general election, Thein Nyunt formed an alliance with the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).^[7] The USDP pledged not to contest the Thingyangyun Township seat to improve Thein Nyunt's odds of winning the race.^[7] Thein Nyunt's son, Nay Aung, a co-founder of the NNDP, disavowed his father's military alliance, and reported the incident to the Union Election Commission.^[7] Thein Nyunt met with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Min Aung Hlaing before the 2020 election. Thein Nyunt ultimately lost the 2020 election to an NLD candidate.^[8] He was appointed to the State Administration Council on 2 February 2021, in the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.^[9]

References

1. Min Aung Hlaing (1 February 2023). "State Administration Council Order No 5/2023" (PDF). Global New Light of Myanmar. p. 6. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
2. "Burma-related Designations; Counter Terrorism Designations". U.S. Department of the Treasury. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
3. "Thein Nyunt: 'I've Stood Tirelessly by the People'". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
4. "အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီပါတီသစ်ပါတီဥက္ကဋ္ဌ ဦးသိန်းညွန့် သင်္ဃန်းကျွန်းမြို့နယ် ပြည်သူ့လွှတ်တော်မဲဆန္ဒနယ်၌ အထွေထွေရွေးကောက်ပွဲ ယှဉ်ပြိုင်မည်". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-02-04.
5. "ဦးသိန်းညွန့် ပါတီသစ်ထောင်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 2011-07-04. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
6. "ပြည်သူ့လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်လောင်း တစ်ဦးချင်းစီ၏ ဆန္ဒမဲရရှိမှုအခြေအနေ ( ၂၀၁၅ ခုနှစ်၊ အထွေထွေရွေးကောက်ပွဲ )". Union Election Commission (in Burmese).
7. "Son of pro-military politician tries to have father's party evicted from its headquarters". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
8. "Co-opting Civilians into Myanmar's State Administration Council Junta". FULCRUM. 2021-09-17. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
9. "မန်းငြိမ်းမောင်၊ ဦးသိန်းညွန့်နဲ့ ဦးခင်မောင်ဆွေတို့ကို တပ်မတော်နေရာပေး". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-02-02.