The seemingly all-powerful junta, which jails its opponents and crushes popular uprisings by force, is afraid of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, the pro-democracy opposition leader in the country formerly known as Burma, and of the continuing undercurrent of support she commands among the people.
Thein Sein, whose semi-civilian government took power when the junta stepped aside in 2011, and powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing, have said they would respect the result and hold reconciliation talks with Suu Kyi soon.
Although nominally led by Gen. Sunthorn Kongsompong, another powerful leader of the junta was army chief Suchinda Kraprayoon.
Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, one of the three most powerful men in the junta, anointed it with sacred water containing elements of gold, silver and nine precious stones.
All agreed that the second most powerful man in the junta, military-intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt, who had engineered a meeting between Ms Suu Kyi and Than Shwe back in 1994, was committed to a reconciliation.
Air Marshal Kỳ, the prime minister and the most powerful member of the junta feared Thi as a rival.
They are to the museum as generals are to juntas, rich, powerful, ruthless, essential to maintaining the regime.
One of the most powerful generals in Myanmar's junta was killed today in a helicopter crash that left 14 others missing and presumed dead, the government said.
Mr. Hurban had long wondered if he was truly the biological son of the couple who reared him from infancy, farmers who had received him in 1978 from a powerful landowner with ties to the junta.
In the 1970s Marcinkus started doing business with Roberto Calvi, president of the Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, who turned out to have links with the Sicilian mafia and the masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due (P2), whose members included powerful figures in the Argentinian military junta.
The current junta seized power that year.
