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Lahpai Maw Htun Aung (Burmese: လဖိုင်မော်ထွန်းအောင်; born c. 1984) is a Burmese politician, social activist and technologist. He is a deputy minister of electricity and energy of the National Unity Government of Myanmar formed by the opponents of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.

Early life and education

Born to a small-scale Hpakant jade miner, when Maw Htun Aung was in high school, he experienced his father going bankrupt when the military enacted a gemstone law to make way for military-linked companies to exploit the area. This encouraged him to work on community development activities, providing technical support related to natural resource management.

He got his bachelor's degree from the University of Computer Studies, Yangon. In 2010 he completed his master's degree in policy and social development from Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He also pursued a Master of Public Administration degree at Cornell University.

Social activities

Since 2004 Maw Htun Aung has been working at a number of international non-government organizations such as the Myanmar Compassion Project, World Vision Myanmar, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and Spectrum-SDKN. He has also worked as a country manager at the New York-based Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) for about five years. In 2015 he co-founded and worked as a strategic consultant at Another Development, a research group focused on implementation of public policy.

Political career

Maw Htun Aung joined the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) as technical support for its political organizations.

In the 2020 general election, he contested the fifth constituency of Shan State, which consists of the townships of Mu Se, Kutkai and Namhkam, for the Amyotha Hluttaw (Upper House). Realizing that "there would be a lot of restrictions for him if he talks about the rights of ethnic people", Maw Htun Aung represented the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), a major ethnic party in Shan State, at the election. While Maw Htun Aung is ethnically Kachin, he took the unusual step of running for a party associated with the Shan people. He claimed in an interview that this was to serve as an example of inter-ethnic cooperation and to support the SNLD's policies on federalism. Nonetheless, the seat he was selected for within Shan State was one with a sizeable Kachin population. The seat was ultimately held by Aik Mun from the Ta'ang (Palaung) National Party, who had also won the seat once before in 2015; Aik Mun won 49,221 votes (27.38%); Maw Htun Aung 46,169 (25.68%).

That government was ousted three months later in the 2021 Myanmar coup. Some of its members, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, formed the National Unity Government of Myanmar on 16 April 2021. Maw Htun Aung was appointed its deputy minister of electricity and energy on 26 July 2021. A week into his appointment, he posted on social media, criticizing the military junta for trying to win international recognition and legitimacy: "Putting a sheep's skin on a wolf doesn't make the wolf less of a wolf".

References

1. ^ "'We all have the same goal': SNLD candidate Maw Htun Awng talks federalism and the vote". Frontier Myanmar. 22 October 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
2. "A technocrat's dreams for Myanmar and its people". The Myanmar Times. 15 September 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
3. ""စစ်ကောင်စီက စစ်သားတွေကို ဘာကြောင့် နုတ်ထွက်ခွင့် မပေးရဲရတာလဲ"ခေါင်းစဉ်ဖြင့် ဆွေးနွေး ပွဲ တိုက်ရိုက်ထုတ်လွှင့်မည်". DVB Burmese. 31 October 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
4. ^ "အရပ်ဘက်လှုပ်ရှားမှုမှသည် ရွေးကောက်ခံနိုင်ငံရေးဆီ ဦးတည်လာသူများ". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 4 November 2021.
5. ^ "ပြည်ထောင်စုဒုဝန်ကြီး – လျှပ်စစ်နှင့်စွမ်းအင်ဝန်ကြီးဌာန". Ministry of Electricity and Energy. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
6. "ရှမ်းမြောက်မှာဝင်ပြိုင်မဲ့ ကချင်အမျိုးသား ဦးမော်ထွန်းအောင်နှင့် တွေ့ဆုံခြင်း". Frontier Myanmar (in Burmese). 23 October 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
7. "Analysis | In Myanmar, Concerns That China's Help on COVID-19 Comes With Strings Attached". The Irrawaddy. 24 April 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
8. "ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်မှ ထင်ရှားကျော်ကြားသည့် လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်လောင်းများ၏ မဲရလာဒ်". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
9. "More activists and NGO workers are vying to be MPs - and shunning the NLD in favour of smaller parties". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
10. "2020 General Election Candidates". Union Election Commission. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
11. "Shan Party Candidate Alleges Fraud in Myanmar's General Election". The Irrawaddy. 24 December 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
12. "2020 General Election Results of Each Candidate". Union Election Commission. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
13. "CRPH announces lineup of interim 'national unity government'". Myanmar Now. 16 April 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
14. "လျှပ်စစ်နှင့်စွမ်းအင်ဝန်ကြီးဌာန ဝန်ကြီးခန့်အပ်တာဝန်ပေးအပ်ခြင်း - CRPH". crphmyanmar.org. 26 July 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
15. "Myanmar shadow government condemns army ruler for taking PM role". Reuters. 2 August 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.

External links

• Maw Htun Aung on Facebook

• 1984 births
• Living people
• People from Kachin State
• Burmese Kachin people
• Alumni of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• Cornell University alumni
• Government ministers of Myanmar