The Lady and the tramplers

One brave Lady, one brave people

The world's eyes are on Myammar, where a by-election for just 45 seats out of a total of 664 seats in the rubber-stamp Parliament ended on Sunday.

The ruling regime of "retired" generals (what I call the tramplers) still hold a solid grip but have shrewdly read the tea leaves -- that they have to calibrate just enough easing of the controls to gain manoeuvring room in the coming great power rivalry over Southeast Asia, of which Myanmar is strategically located.

They also know the time has come to not put all their economic and foreign investment-seeking eggs in one basket: China. The West is suddenly welcome. 

Thus has the democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi been allowed to contest the by-election. She knows she is being used by the regime. By the same token, she hopes to seize the opportunity -- by winning a seat and having her National League for Democarcy (NLD) party be represented in Parliament -- to "ride the tiger" without fallimg off, and to stay true to her mission.

It will not be easy, as this quote from the Nobel Peace laureate on the eve of the election suggests:

---------------------------------------------------------

I went to see the movie about Ms Suu Kyi, The Lady, last week. It admittedly tends to project a black-and-white portrayal of a story that is highly complex, but it mostly did its job of tracing Ms Suu Kyi's (and her family's) transformation from an ordinary life to an extraordinary one.

I am also moved by Philip Delves Broughton's review article, "Democracy's Quiet Champion" of Peter Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, "The Lady and the Peacock", in the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577307790680289660.html

The article's opening paragraphs give an idea of the risks she and her small band of loyal supporters have had to face till now...

On the night of May 30, 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi was driving in a convoy of cars through northern Myanmar -- the country she had grown up knowing as Burma -- when two monks hailed her from the side of the road. She ordered her driver to stop. But as she spoke to the monks, several trucks full of armed men screamed up and surrounded her convoy. It was an ambush.

The government had decided to have her killed rather than tolerate her opposition any longer. Thugs began pouring out of the bushes, brandishing clubs and iron rods. Aung San Suu Kyi would have been among the more than 70 killed that night had it not been for her driver, who turned his car into a battering ram. He drove straight at the attackers, forcing them to scatter, then wove through several roadblocks. By the time he was stopped by the police, they were far from the rabid mob.