Win Myint

Win Myint was president of Myanmar from 2018 until the coup of February 2021 removed him, and he spent five years in prison afterwards. He was born in the Ayeyarwady delta and took a science degree in geology at Rangoon before qualifying as a lawyer. He joined the democracy movement during the 1988 uprising and was elected in 1990 for the National League for Democracy, in the election the military annulled, and he was imprisoned for his politics in the years that followed. He returned to parliament in the 2012 by-elections that brought the NLD back into legal politics, and became speaker of the House of Representatives in 2016 after the party's landslide. When President Htin Kyaw resigned on health grounds in March 2018, Win Myint was elected to replace him. The presidency was a constrained office: the constitution written by the generals reserved a quarter of parliament and the security ministries to the army, and real authority lay with Aung San Suu Kyi as state counsellor, whose close ally he was. The NLD won again, more heavily, in November 2020. The army claimed fraud without evidence and seized power on 1 February 2021, detaining him in the early hours along with Aung San Suu Kyi. He was convicted in closed proceedings on charges including incitement and breaching coronavirus restrictions during the campaign, and sentenced to years of imprisonment. He was reportedly offered his freedom if he would resign and blame the election on fraud, and refused. He was pardoned by the coup leader Min Aung Hlaing in 2026.

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