As welcome as it is, Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is part of a Machiavellian calculation by the military junta in Myanmar that it has a lot less to fear from her....
Last Sunday’s election, the first to be held in 20 years had the military regime’s Union Solidarity and Development Party heading for a sweeping victory, winning 80 percent of the seats, and assuring Prime Minister General Than Shwe and other top military leaders of a role in Parliament. A significant number of the seats the USDP won came from areas where the party was the sole contestant.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy had taken the decision to boycott what it considered a process that had been rigged to ensure the success of the Union Solidarity and Development party while allowing the emergence of small opposition groups that would divide the opposition. It also insisted that it could not abandon its leader who was at the time still under house arrest. As a result of its refusal to register for the elections the National League for Democracy was officially disbanded as a political party.
Two decades ago, when the last elections were held in the country then known as Burma, the NLD, with Aung San Suu Kyi already in detention, won in a landslide victory (80 percent of parliamentary seats and 59 percent of the popular vote) which the military regime quickly annulled. Suu Kyi would spend 15 of the next 20 years under house arrest, until her release last Saturday.
The Nobel Peace laureate whose father, Gen. U Aung San, was hailed as the founder of modern Burma, has led a life that was circumscribed by her commitment to the cause of freedom and democracy in her country. Political rivals assassinated U Aung San in 1947. Suu Kyi’s life thereafter followed the course of her mother ‘s political and diplomatic career until she returned to Burma in 1988 in the middle of a successful academic career, to take care of her then ailing mother, leaving her husband and two sons in England. She stayed on to lead the pro-democracy movement and never left. She was first placed under house arrest in 1989. Her husband Michael Aris’ visit to Myanmar in1995 was the last time she ever saw him alive. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 the Burmese government refused to grant him a visa to the country. Suu Kyi, fearing that the regime’s insistence that she visit him instead was a ruse not to allow her back, did not go. From the time she retuned to Burma in 1988 to when he died in March 1999, she saw her husband five times.
It is quite clear that the sacrifices Ms Suu Kyi will have to make are not yet over. It is a changed political terrain with far more disparate issues to contend with, not the least of which will be a jostling for power in more divided political field. Her message to the emotional crowd of supporters outside her gates on Sunday night seemed to recognise this. She spoke in tones that had echoes of Nelson Mandela, of her willingness to reconcile with her jailers and to meet with the country’s strongman, Gen. Than Shwe. She indicated she would be willing to speak with Western leaders about lifting economic sanctions against Myanmar, if that was what the people wanted. To her followers she urged patience, adding there was much work to do together.
Already the NLD has asserted its preparedness to challenge the alleged election malpractices of the USDP, as have the other parties who contested. The road ahead promises still to be tough but the direction is a lot clearer, not the least because of the courage of Aung San Suu Kyi.
