Aung San Suu Kyi told the world’s press today that if her party, the National league for Democracy, wins a sufficiently thumping victory in Sunday’s general election it will set about amending the constitution – which bars her from the presidency because her sons have non-Burmese citizenship – and in the mean time that she would rule “above the President.”
But even if the party were to win all the seats, she insisted, she would still follow the path of “national reconciliation.”
In the past five years Burma has emerged from decades of military rule, but despite the freeing of political prisoners and the lifting of censorship, reform so far was only “a veneer”, she said. “The great majority of people have not become better off since the reforms began,” she said. “Some especially in rural areas have become poorer since the lifting of sanctions.”
More than 300 journalists and television crews from all over the world streamed into the garden of the lakeside home where she was detained for 15 years for the opportunity to hear the Lady – who has given few interviews in recent months – spell out her post-election plans.
Pugnaciously assertive, but with flashes of sardonic humour, she left her audience in no doubt about her hunger for power, and her appetite for the fight ahead. Aged 70 she is now within sight of real power for the first time. Yet plenty of obstacles remain in the way, not least the possibility of the army, which still controls Burma behind the scenes, rigging the election as it did the last one, in 2010.
If that is their plan – and Suu Kyi claimed there had already been much irregular “advance voting,” and that voters’ lists had not been properly checked by the election commission, which is controlled by a former general – her performance today may have hardened their determination. “I will run the government,” she said firmly. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to overcome minor obstacles like the constitution.”
