Laos’seventh National Assembly (NA) on Wednesday re-elected General Secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Choummaly Sayasone as president of Laos, and the party’s Politburo member Thongsing Thammavong as prime minister.

NA members voted in the country’s senior leaders during the assembly’s first session, which opened on Wednesday morning at the NA building in the Lao capital of Vientiane .

Speaking after the announcement of his second five-year tenure as president, Choummaly said he would contribute his wisdom and strength to his party and country, “to make the country wealthy and powerful, people happy and rich, promote solidarity, stability, democracy, justice and civilization, and pursue the independent foreign policy of peace and develop friendly cooperative relations with other countries from the start to the end.”

Prime Minister Thongsing assured the assembly that the economic development objectives set by the LPRP’s Ninth Party Congress in March 2011 would be achieved.

Thongsing added that the Lao government would “persist in moving in the right economic direction, strengthen socio-cultural development, adhere to a people-centered approach, and give priority to education to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.”

Also on Wednesday, the 132-member assembly, which was elected in a nationwide poll on May 30, re-elected the party’s Politburo member Pany Yathotu as president of its seventh legislature.

Full Article: Laos’ National Assembly re-elects President Choummaly, PM Thongsing.