Suu Kyi to retain power if polls are held again in Burma

Mizzima News 

January 13, 2005

Guwahati: Aung San Suu Kyi has all the charisma needed to win a general election in Burma if the military junta ever puts fair polls in order.

The common people in Mandalay believe it and are convinced about the leadership qualities of Suu Kyi, who is presently under house arrest by the dictators in Rangoon. So states a write-up by a journalist from Manipuri, India, who recently visited Mandalay with the India-Asean Car Rally.

Pradip Phanjoubam, editor of the "Imphal Free Press," elaborated in an article, "Road to Mandalay," that he found local inhabitants of the city really afraid to talk about Suu Kyi, "because mentioning the name of the lady (Aung San Suu Kyi) will only invite serious trouble," he told a Mandalay-based Burmese. After his first-hand experience interacting with local people in the second-largest city in Burma, the journalist said they do not believe there is a chance of holding another fair election in Burma.

He said local inhabitants had little hope that another general election would be held under the military regime in the near future. "Maybe not even in Suu Ky's lifetime," one said, expressing apprehension and requesting anonymity. "In this age of information, there is hardly anybody willing to part with information in Myanmar (Burma), especially if the information is political in nature.

All become tightlipped if the query is about the lady most in international news, Aung San Suu Kyi," explained Phanjoubam. However, he said, except for the forced amnesia about Suu Kyi, life otherwise is very pleasantly normal in Mandalay, at least outwardly. 

"We did not stay long enough or travel widely enough to know the nuances of dissident political undercurrents in the country. Otherwise, the petty crime rate is low, although official corruption, we were told, is notoriously high.

People of both genders, young and old, are out on the streets till late into the night going about their everyday business and living out life as they have always known it to be," Pradip elaborated, adding that, "contrary to expectation, missing throughout the journey was the overbearing presence of the military.

In fact, there is much more olive green in the streets of Imphal or Kohima."

"Myanmar (Burma) has also been thumbing its nose at the West in like fashion," he said. "The manner in which the military regime recently removed prime minister Khin Nyunt, a known moderate with too much ear for protests from the West, is just an example. He was replaced by a known hardliner with little sympathy for the pro-democracy movement, Soe Win." 

"Democracy in Myanmar (Burma) then seems still a far cry, that is, unless the pressures and sanctions on it come from its regional neighbors first and foremost. Developments in recent times definitely do not suggest this is about to happen. Even India has joined the frantic prospecting of the country, with its own strategic security and business interests in mind."