The winds of change have been blowing across Myanmar too, if only at a slow pace in the last few years.
The winds of change have been blowing across Myanmar too, if only at a slow pace in the last few years. And now a gale force wind is blowing in the form of Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party who have swept the polls and are headed for a mighty legislative presence as well as executive power in the country’s complicated parliamentary-presidency system.
The military junta that ruled with an iron hand for five decades has been seeking a sort of democratic image in ruling the country in a quasi-civilian government controlled by the Union Solidarity Development Party led by President Thein Sein. If the results of the path breaking polls of November 8 are released soon by the Election Commission and accepted by the USDL, Ms Suu Kyi could well be calling the shots except that she cannot be elected President due to a constitutional bar on her.
Mr Thein Sein’s change of heart in 2011 had pulled the country out of the wilderness even as political and economic reforms sent the right signals, as far as the US, that Myanmar was ready to welcome the end of its international isolation.
The rise of New Delhi-educated Suu Kyi, whose father was Burmese ambassador to India, will hearten India although the government had for a long time not backed her wholeheartedly as their diplomatic strategy revolved around keeping the junta in good humour so as not to allow a neighbour, with whom we share a 1,600-km eastern border, to go overboard and fall to considerable Chinese influence.
India should persuade the Myanmar establishment not to place too many more obstacles in Ms Suu Kyi’s path. India has to support the quest for a full democratic changeover, which would be in its interest as well as Yangon’s.
