Myint Swe ( my, မြင့်ဆွေ, ; born 24 May 1951) is a Burmese politician currently serving as Acting

President of Myanmar The president of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar () is the head of state and constitutional head of government of Myanmar. The president leads the Cabinet of Myanmar, the executive branch of the Burmese government. The current presiden ...

as well as First Vice President. He previously served as the acting president after the resignation of President

Htin Kyaw Htin Kyaw ( my, ထင်ကျော်, or ; born 20 July 1946) is a Burmese politician, writer and scholar who served as the ninth president of Myanmar from 30 March 2016 to 21 March 2018. He was the first elected president to hold the off ...

on 21 March 2018, and the chief minister of

Yangon Region Yangon Region(, ; formerly Rangoon Division and Yangon Division) is an administrative region of Myanmar. Located in the heart of Lower Myanmar, the division is bordered by Bago Region to the north and east, the Gulf of Martaban to the south, and ...

from 30 March 2011 to 30 March 2016. On 30 March 2016, he was sworn in as the vice president of Myanmar. He is an ethnic

Mon Mon, MON or Mon. may refer to: Places * Mon State, a subdivision of Myanmar * Mon, India, a town in Nagaland * Mon district, Nagaland * Mon, Raebareli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, India * Mon, Switzerland, a village in the Canton of Grisons * An ...

ex-military officer in the

Myanmar Army The Myanmar Army ( my, တပ်မတော်(ကြည်း), ) is the largest branch of the Tatmadaw, Armed Forces (''Tatmadaw'') of Myanmar (Burma) and has the primary responsibility of conducting land-based military operations. The My ...

with the rank of a

lieutenant general Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

. Myint Swe was declared acting president by the

Tatmadaw Tatmadaw (, , ) is the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is administered by the Ministry of Defence and composed of the Myanmar Army, the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Air Force. Auxiliary services include th ...

in the coup d'état on 1 February 2021, after which he immediately transferred power to

Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services The commander-in-chief of Defence Services () is the commanding officer of the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. Since a state of emergency was declared following the 2021 military coup d'état, the commander-in-chief has been the highest ...

Min Aung Hlaing Min Aung Hlaing ( my, မင်းအောင်လှိုင် abbreviated: MAL ; born 3 July 1956) also known as Alaungsithu is a Burmese politician and army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration Coun ...

. He has rarely been seen in public since the coup, with Min Aung Hlaing serving as the face of the government. He has twice extended the country's originally one-year state of emergency by six month periods at meetings of the

National Defence and Security Council The National Defence and Security Council ( my, အမျိုးသား ကာကွယ်ရေးနှင့် လုံခြုံရေး ကောင်စီ, ; abbreviated NDSC) is an eleven-member national security council respons ...

Military career

He graduated from the

Defence Services Academy The Defence Services Academy ( my, စစ်‌တက္ကသိုလ်, ) located in Pyin Oo Lwin, is the premier military service academy of Myanmar, training future officers for all three branches of Myanmar military. The Ministry of Defence ...

in 1971 as part of the 15th intake. He became a brigadier general and commander of Light Infantry Division 11 in 1997. He was appointed as Commander of Southeastern Command and member of

State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...

in 2001. He was transferred as Commander of Yangon Command and promoted to major general. He also acted as Chairman of Yangon Division Peace and Development Council. He became the Chief of Military Security Affairs after

Khin Nyunt General Khin Nyunt (; ; born 23 October 1939) is a Burmese military officer and politician. He held the office of Chief of Intelligence and was Prime Minister of Myanmar from 25 August 2003 until 18 October 2004. Early life and education Kh ...

was purged in 2004. He became Chief of Bureau of Special Operations – 5 (BSO-5) in January 2006. He is the first ethnic Mon to be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in 2005. He was promoted to

Quartermaster Quartermaster is a military term, the meaning of which depends on the country and service. In land armies, a quartermaster is generally a relatively senior soldier who supervises stores or barracks and distributes supplies and provisions. In m ...

General and was rumored to be the next in line to replace

Maung Aye Vice Senior General Maung Aye ( my, မောင်အေး ; born 25 December 1937) is a Burmese military official who was Vice Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the ruling military junta of Myanmar, from July 1993 to ...

in 2009. He executed 3 major events while he was commanding the Yangon Command, arresting family members of

Ne Win Ne Win ( my, နေဝင်း ; 10 July 1910, or 14 or 24 May 1911 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also President of Burma ...

in 2002 after an alleged coup conspiracy was uncovered, arresting

and his associates in 2004 in the purge of the Military Intelligence faction and crushing the

Saffron Revolution The Saffron Revolution ( my, ရွှေဝါရောင်တော်လှန်ရေး) was a series of economic and political protests and demonstrations that took place during August, September, and October 2007 in Myanmar. The pro ...

in 2007. His actions after

Cyclone Nargis Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis ( my, နာဂစ်, ur, نرگس ) was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclone m ...

was criticized. He dealt with activists harshly in the pre-2010 general election period.

Political career

Chief Minister of Yangon Region

He was nominated as chief-minister of the

after the

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

by President

Thein Sein Thein Sein ( my, သိန်းစိန်; IPA: ; born 20 April 1944) is a Burmese politician and retired general in the Myanmar Army who served as the eighth President of Myanmar from 2011 to 2016. He previously served as Prime Minister ...

. He was tipped to be nominated to become

Vice President of Burma The vice-presidents of Myanmar (also known as Burma) are the second highest-ranking posts in the government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The offices were established by the 2008 Myanmar constitution and rank directly below the pre ...

after

Tin Aung Myint Oo '' Thihathura'' Tin Aung Myint Oo ( my, တင်အောင်မြင့်ဦး ; born 29 May 1949) is a Burmese former military official and politician who served as First Vice President of Myanmar from 30 March 2011 to 1 July 2012. He is ...

's resignation in 2012, but did not qualify per the

Constitution of Burma The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ, links=, transli ...

, as his son-in-law was an Australian citizen at the time.

Vice Presidency

On 11 March 2016, military-appointed MPs of the

Assembly of the Union The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စု လွှတ်တော် lit. Assembly of the Union) is the ''de jure'' national-level bicameral legislature of Myanmar (officially known as the ''Republic of the Union of My ...

nominated him as one of the Vice Presidents of Myanmar. He received 213 votes on 15 March 2016 and became First Vice President of

's Cabinet. He was sworn in on 30 March 2016.

Acting President

On 21 March 2018, following the sudden resignation of Htin Kyaw as President of Myanmar, Myint Swe was sworn in as acting president under the Constitution of Myanmar, which also called for the Assembly to select a new president within seven days of Htin Kyaw's resignation. On 1 February 2021, Myint Swe again became acting president after

Win Myint Win Myint ( ; born 8 November 1951) is a Burmese politician who served as the tenth president of Myanmar from 2018 to 2021. He was removed from office in the 2021 Burmese coup d'état. He was the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Myanm ...

was removed from office by the

Myanmar Armed Forces Tatmadaw (, , ) is the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is administered by the Ministry of Defence and composed of the Myanmar Army, the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Air Force. Auxiliary services include th ...

, after a coup, under the Article 424 of the Provisions on State of Emergency.

Personal life

Myint Swe is of Mon descent. He is married to

Khin Thet Htay Khin Thet Htay ( my, ခင်သက်ဌေး) is the acting First Lady of Myanmar. She is also the current Second Lady of Myanmar. She initially became acting First Lady when her spouse became acting President for ten days in March 2018. Sh ...

, and has two children, including Khin Thet Htar Swe.

References

, - {{Heads of state of republics 1951 births Burmese generals Burmese people of Mon descent Defence Services Academy alumni Living people Vice-presidents of Myanmar Leaders who took power by coup Union Solidarity and Development Party politicians People from Mandalay Acting presidents of Myanmar 21st-century Burmese politicians Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List