Yangon: With the fighting peacock flag flying outside, Aung San Suu Kyi’s Yangon party headquarters are once again a hive of activity as her Myanmar opposition prepares for its first poll battle in two decades.
The excited crowds that gathered around the democracy icon this week as she registered her candidacy for April 1 by-elections testified to the new energy galvanising Myanmar’s politics after almost half a century of military rule.
Suu Kyi, who spent much of the past two decades in detention, has already registered to run for a lower house seat in a rural constituency near Yangon — the latest dramatic change in the country formerly known as Burma.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, the daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero General Aung San, was under house arrest at the time of her party’s 1990 landslide election victory, which was ignored by the ruling generals. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party boycotted a 2010 election that swept the army’s allies to power, saying the rules were unfair.
But with a new-found confidence in the government, she will engage in battle herself for the first time — a challenge she appears to address with humility. “Am I looking forward to it? I am not sure I think of it as anything other than hard work.
But I am not afraid of hard work,” she said at a recent press conference. Myanmar’s regime has surprised even critics with a series of reformist moves including dialogue with the opposition, the release of hundreds of political prisoners and peace talks with armed ethnic minority rebels.
The upcoming vote is seen as a major test of the new administration’s democratic ambitions after a series of conciliatory gestures by the army-backed government that replaced the long-ruling junta last year. To those who — in Myanmar and abroad — have put Suu Kyi on a pedestal and believe running in this election is beneath her, she defends the will of the people.
“This is a very dangerous attitude to think that any politician is too high up to be involved in the basis of parliamentary democracy. I think we all have to start with at least a sense of humility,” she said.
Suu Kyi remains hugely popular in Myanmar and there is little doubt she would be elected if the polls are free and fair. “Of course I will vote for the NLD because we love Daw (Aunt) Suu and General Aung San,” said Yangon taxi driver Khin Aye. “We believe in her. She will be the one who can work for our country and the people.” (PTI)