Members of the controversial new Parliament -- sitting this week for the first time since a national election in November -- elected two ex-generals as vice presidents.

The third elected vice president is Sai Mauk Kham, an ethnic Shan and doctor who runs a private clinic.

However, although Kham is a civilian, a political neophyte and virtually unknown, he is a member of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which won the majority of seats. This adds weight to arguments by Parliament's detractors that the government will be military in all but name.

Former Gen. Thein Sein, prime minister in the outgoing military junta and one of the three vice presidents, is a long-standing ally of junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe who has ruled Myanmar, formerly called Burma, since 1992. This makes Sein the one most analysts say will get the top job to replace Shwe, 77, as president of Myanmar in a parliamentary election by the weekend.

Sein leads the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which comprises mainly retired military officers who resigned their posts to join the party and run as civilians. Not unexpectedly, the USDP won a huge majority in the general elections that most Western government considered fraudulent and not inclusive of many active pro democracy parties.

Running against Sein is former Lt. Gen. Tin Aung Myint Oo, elected the third vice president and widely regarded as an ally of the more senior military man Sein. He isn't considered a serious contender.

Some analysts have said the Parliament, although military dominated, represents at least a move in the direction of democracy in a country that has been ruled by generals for most of the time since 1962.

But critics point out that one-quarter of the parliamentary seats is reserved for military appointments. Along with the military-backed USDP, military interests likely will dominate civilian concerns.

Absent from Parliament is the winner of the last national elections in 1990, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Her National League for Democracy party, which won the 1990 contest, didn't register as a political party because Suu Kyi remained under house arrest. As a criminal, according to hastily enacted laws before the election, she was disallowed from running for political office.

Parliament's place in, and effect upon, Myanmar society remains to be seen, especially in light of the military's great influence, both as an organization and its individual officers, in the economy. Many thriving businesses are owned outright by the junta or its members, although the junta has been moving toward divesting itself of businesses, at least outwardly.

In one of the first moves by the Parliament -- sitting in a large new purpose-built building in the new capital city of Naypyitaw -- Thein Nyunt, a Lower House member of Parliament from Thingangyun Township in Yangon, said he will introduce a motion to grant amnesty to Myanmar citizens in exile.

Nyunt told Mizzima, an independent Myanmar news agency based in India, he would introduce a motion calling for the lifting of economic sanctions against Myanmar imposed by Western countries.

Nyunt, a former official of the National League for Democracy, led in Suu Kyi's absence by lawyer Win Tin, criticized the party's decision not to register for the election.

"The weak position of democratic forces in the Parliament is because of the wrong strategy adopted by Win Tin and his associates," he said.

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