Beauty Vs. Beast

It's not a happy birthday.

Why? Because the battle between the state of Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi goes on. On Saturday, Suu Kyi will celebrate her 65th birthday alone except for two caretakers who share her lakeside home in Rangoon, where she has celebrated solo birthdays for 15 of the past 21 years in which she's been under house arrest.

This is a beauty vs. the beast battle, borrowing the words of British historian and author Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote a popular story, Beauty and the Beast in Burma.

Kyaw Zwa Moe is managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].

Suu Kyi has been the victim of character assassination numerous times in the past 20 years. Physically, she was attacked by the ruling generals' thugs when her car was mobbed in 1996 in Rangoon and again, more publicly, when her motorcade was ambushed in Depayin in Upper Burma in 2003. She is regularly attacked by the regime's media and junta-back groups like the Union Solidarity and Development Association.

Although the regime regularly creates new schemes and plots to smear her image, she has survived and never lost the support of the people.

In fact, Suu Kyi and Burmese politics have been like the two faces of a coin ever since she entered the country's political arena during the nationwide pro-democracy uprising in 1988. But the question is, for how much longer will she be under house arrest and ignored by the regime's leaders?

The problem between Suu Kyi and the junta is complicated. Since '88, it's really come down to the relationships between three players: the military government and Suu Kyi, as the opposition leader, with the international community as moderator.

Let's look at the two key players—Suu Kyi and the regime, whose policies and style can be compared and contrasted in four areas.

First, Suu Kyi:
Ideology: liberal Western democracy
Ethics: plain honesty practiced as political integrity
Force: National League for Democracy, the winner of the 1990 elections, now disbanded
Methodology: dialogue (through non-violence)

Now, the Junta:
Ideology: disciplined democracy (opposed to liberal Western democracy)
Ethics: cunning, manipulation and oppression
Force: more than 400,000 soldiers
Methodology: “democracy roadmap” with seven steps (the upcoming election: step five)

So far, Suu Kyi has been unsuccessful in persuading the generals to join her in reconciliation talks, a point stressed over and over again by members of the international community. Everyone from the United States to neighboring counties to the UN have been trying to bring Suu Kyi and the generals to the table. In short, all efforts have failed.

Some critics say that the opposition movement has failed because of Suu Kyi's inflexibility and a lack of political strategy. A decade ago, British author Ash, in his story, compared Suu Kyi with Vaclav Havel, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, who nominated Suu Kyi for the same prize. Ash recalled: “Talking to him in the 1980s, I always had a strong sense of a political strategy. I did not have this impression with her. She has a firm grasp of which political systems Burma needs; a much less clear idea of how to achieve it.”

On a level, fair playing field, Suu Kyi and the opposition would clearly come out winners. Suu Kyi still has wide respect from the majority of the Burmese people. In Burma, there are not many leaders who have won the hearts of the people. But among them are Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, who won independence from the British in 1948, and Suu Kyi herself, the leader of what she calls “Burma's second struggle for independence.”

However, on March 29, the NLD, following Suu Kyi's decision, voted not to register as a political party to contest the junta's upcoming election this year. In reality, honesty and political integrity can't defeat the cunning, manipulation and oppression of the generals in Burma today. Recognizing its failure, the NLD officially apologized in a public letter for its “unsuccessful struggle for democracy” over a 20-year period.

In spite of the party's failure, Suu Kyi is still the person the generals fear most.