Suu Kyi ‘Above President’ if NLD Wins

Detractors say her reputation as a human rights icon has diminished in recent years as she plunged herself into Myanmar s febrile politics, often choosing hard pragmatism over the steely idealism of her house arrest years.

‘It’s not a question of trying to exaggerate small problems into big ones, and big ones to the extent where they are totally unmanageable’.

The NLD faces an uphill battle on November 8 as it seeks to take control of the country from the military and its allies in its first general election since 1990.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy bears China no ill will, said Win Htein, a member of the party’s central executive committee.

Suu Kyi said she would lead even if she can’t be president.

In May 1990, Myanmar held its first multi-party elections since 1960 when the military dictatorship took power. About the “change” and “Time to change” [NLD’s catchline].

The gated compound in Yangon that was once her prison is now a powerful campaign platform, with camera crews jostling for position in front of her.

Ganju was born in Rangoon, Burma – which is now called Yangon, Myanmar. Suu Kyi spoke with foreign reporters who have converged on the country to cover the election and our correspondent Rian Maelzer was there. That led to decades of harsh military rule, isolation and economic sanctions.

Suu Kyi’s party has not, however, gone as far to openly challenge Massachusetts Ba Tha on its campaign to marginalize Muslims or its race and religion laws. Sein has received accolades for liberating political prisoners and reintroducing a few press freedoms.

Yet the military continues to pull political strings.

As shown by the Myanmar government’s violent episodes and campaigns to marginalize the country’s minorities, the difference in ethnic composition has important implications on electoral results, as ethnicity is highly political and deeply ingrained in the political infrastructure of the country. Citizens who have foreign spouses or offspring are ineligible for contest the presidency.

“I will be above the president”. She then brushed off a query about whether the constitution would allow such an arrangement.

But they planned the route to “disciplined democracy” carefully, passing a 2008 constitution that ring-fenced the role of the military in parliament and barring Suu Kyi from the presidency. But, now there are people who reject these things. Whether it will loosen the Army’s grip remains to be seen.

We have been told we will have access to all polling places.

Other political parties also caution against too much power concentrated in one person’s hands.

Yet even if Suu Kyi’s party prevails in what is expected to be the freest election in decades in the country also known as Burma, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist can not become president.

But spirits among Suu Kyi s supporters were high. The attack inspired Wednesday’s rally, which drew hundreds of rickshaw drivers to the streets.

Following the national elections, representatives of the legislature will pick a president. “We are prepared for the worst”.

The election is drawing worldwide attention for reasons that go beyond the fate of a fledgling democracy, said Aaron Connelly, a Southeast Asia specialist for the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.

Myanmar’s military chief is an enormously influential if somewhat inscrutable figure.

This society always uses its heart instead of its brains.

Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights group, told IBTimes United Kingdom the allegations that Suu Kyi’s party intentionally bypassed Muslim candidates ahead of the election was “consistent with what Fortify Rights has seen”. The two major parties have not chosen a single Muslim candidate amid toxic anti-Muslim sentiments stoked by Buddhist radicals.

The last time Kyaw Oo, the mechanic, cast a ballot was in 1990, when he voted for Suu Kyi’s party in a nationwide election that it won in a landslide. Nationalist hero Aung San fights with the Japanese, but turns against them in the closing stages of the war, joining the Allied counter-offensive in the hope of achieving independence. “She is insistent that a hypothetical NLD mandate is her personal mandate”, he said, adding “she also resents any obstacles to her destiny”.