Shan State Chief minister, Dr Linn Htut, has indicated that his cabinet will have nine ministers, however he has yet to disclose who these ministers will be.

The nine ministries represented in cabinet will be Development Affairs [Municipal] , Social Welfare, Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, Electric Power and Energy and Industry, Transportation, Agriculture and Livestock, Finance as well as Security and Border Affairs.

It is known that the Security and Border Affairs minister will be Col. Soe Moe Aung, a position that is appointed by the army.

“We cannot tell the other eight ministers yet,” Shan State Chief minister Dr Linn Htut said. “We apologize for that. We will have to discuss again. I think that this cannot be approved right away”, he said.

Apart from a representative from military, the Shan State government ministers are expected to include five representatives from the National League for Democracy (NLD) and three other three representatives from the military backed from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Voting in last year’s election saw the NLD come third in the Shan State Parliament behind both the USDP and the SNLD. Under rules put in place in the 2008 constitution the Shan State Chief Minister is chosen by the President who opted to appoint an NLD representative as Chief Minister of the country’s biggest state.

The Shan State parliament has 33 USDP representatives, 25 SNLD representatives and 23 NLD representatives. There are also 33 seats allocated for military representatives. There are 14 seats that are vacant because voting was not held in these constituencies.

BY SAI AW / Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)