Mahn Win Khaing Than ( my, မန်းဝင်းခိုင်သန်း and also spelled Mahn Win Khine Than or Mann Win Khaing Thann) is a Burmese politician and lawyer who is serving as the Prime Minister of the

National Unity Government of Myanmar The National Unity Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar ( my, အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေး အစိုးရ; abbreviated NUG) is a Myanmar government in exile formed by the Committee Representing Pyidau ...

. An ethnic

Karen Karen may refer to: * Karen (name), a given name and surname * Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding woman displaying certain behaviors People * Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand ** Karen languages or Karenic l ...

, he served as the

Speaker of the Assembly of the Union The Speaker of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော် နာယက) is the presiding officer of the Assembly of the Union, the joint assembly of the bicameral legislature of Myanmar. Electio ...

from 2016 to 2018 and the

Speaker of the House of Nationalities The speaker of the Amyotha Hluttaw ( my, အမျိုးသားလွှတ်တော် ဥက္ကဌ) is the Speaker (politics), presiding officer or Speaker of the Amyotha Hluttaw. List of speakers of the House of Nationalities ...

on behalf of

Kayin State Kayin State ( my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်, ; kjp, ဖၠုံခါန်ႋကၞင့်, italics=no; ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်, ), also known by the endonyms Kawthoolei and Karen State, is a state of Myanmar. The ...

from 2016 until his removal from office in the

2021 Myanmar coup d'état A coup d'état in Myanmar began on the morning of 1 February 2021, when democratically elected members of the country's ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), were deposed by the Tatmadaw—Myanmar's military—which then ve ...

Early life

Mahn Win Khaing Than was born on 23 April 1952 in

Hinthada Township Hinthada Township ( my, ဟင်္သာတမြို့နယ်) is a township of Hinthada District in the Ayeyarwady Division of Myanmar. Notable residents *Bhaddanta Āciṇṇa , image = Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw Bhaddanta Āci� ...

Ayeyarwady Division Ayeyarwady Region ( my, ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး , , ; formerly Ayeyarwady Division and Irrawaddy Division), is a region of Myanmar, occupying the delta region of the Ayeyarwady River (Irrawaddy River). It is bor ...

. He is an ethnic

and a Christian and also the grandson of

Mahn Ba Khaing Mahn Ba Khaing ( my, မန်းဘခိုင် ; 26 October 1903 – 19 July 1947) was a Karen politician who served as the Minister of Industry and Labour in Burma's pre-independence government. He was assassinated on 19 July 1947 a ...

, who served as Minister for Industry and Minister for Labor in the pre-independence cabinet of the

AFPFL The Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), ; abbreviated , ''hpa hsa pa la'' was the dominant political alliance in Burma from 1945 to 1958. It consisted of political parties and mass and class organizations. The league evolved out of t ...

government, and was assassinated alongside

Aung San Aung San (, ; 13 February 191519 July 1947) was a Burmese politician, independence activist and revolutionary. He was instrumental in Myanmar's struggle for independence from British rule, but he was assassinated just six months before his goa ...

, the father of

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Myanm ...

on 19 July 1947 in the

Ministers' Building The Ministers' Building ( my, ဝန်ကြီးများရုံး; also called the Ministers' Office; is today known as The Secretariat or Secretariat Yangon) was the home and administrative seat of British Burma, in downtown Yangon, Bu ...

, Yangon. Mahn Win Khaing Than graduated from the

Rangoon Arts and Science University The University of Yangon (also Yangon University; my, ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ်, ; formerly Rangoon College, Rangoon University and Rangoon Arts and Sciences University), located in Kamayut, Yangon, is the oldest univers ...

with a law degree in 1975.

Career

He formerly served as the secretary of the Karen Literature and Culture Association, and joined the

Union Karen League The Union Karen League was a political party in Burma led by Win Maung. History The party was formed by San Po Thin and Mahn Ba Khaing in 1947 after a split in the Karen Central Organisation, and became a member of the Anti-Fascist People's Fre ...

in 1990, which contested in the

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

that same year. Then, he joined the

National League for Democracy The National League for Democracy ( my, အမျိုးသား ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်, ; abbr. NLD; Burmese abbr. ဒီချုပ်) is a liberal democratic political party in Myanmar (Burma). It ...

in 2013 and contested for the first time in the

2015 elections The following elections were scheduled to occur in the year 2015. Africa * 2015 Beninese parliamentary election 26 April 2015 * 2015 Burkinabé general election 29 November 2015 * 2015 Burundian legislative election 29 June 2015 * 2015 Burundi ...

. In the 2015 election, he contested and won the

№ 8 constituency for a seat in the country's

upper house An upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house.''Bicameralism'' (1997) by George Tsebelis The house formally designated as the upper house is usually smaller and often has more restric ...

. Following the

on 1 February, Mahn Win Khaing Than went into hiding with fellow senior

officials who also escaped arrest. * * * * On 9 March 2021, Mahn Win Khaing Than was named Acting

Vice-President of Myanmar 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 ...

by the

Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw The Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော် ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီ; abbreviated CRPH) is a Burmese legislative body in exile, representing a g ...

, a

government in exile A government in exile (abbreviated as GiE) is a political group that claims to be a country or semi-sovereign state's legitimate government, but is unable to exercise legal power and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile u ...

composed of ousted

lawmakers who won seats in the 2020 elections. On 16 April 2021, Mahn Win Khaing Than was appointed as the

Prime Minister of Myanmar The prime minister of Myanmar is the head of government of Myanmar. The post was re-established in 2021 by the State Administration Council, the country's ruling military junta, to lead its nominally-civilian provisional government. The prov ...

(not as State Counsellor of Myanmar) by the

as part of the newly-formed National Unity Government.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Win Khaing Than, Mahn 1952 births Living people Members of the House of Nationalities Speakers of the House of Nationalities of Myanmar National League for Democracy politicians Burmese people of Karen descent People from Ayeyarwady Region Burmese Christians 20th-century Burmese lawyers