Until 26 August 1988, when she first entered the struggle, few among the people in the midst of the peaceful revolt against a military-backed dictatorship knew or had any idea who Aung San Suu Kyi was or for what she stood. Seth Mydans, writing in the New York Times, said, ‘She has not previously been involved in politics, but her name was described by one diplomat as “magic” among the public.’1 The ‘magic’ stems from the fact that she is the daughter of Aung San, the leader of the post-Second World War nationalist movement who was assassinated on the eve of Burma’s independence. His name is the most revered in the nation and his memory is still alive. From the moment his daughter stepped into the political arena, she has been at the centre of Burma’s political struggle.
Today, her voice is stilled because she is under house arrest; she was denied the right to participate in the May 1990 election or to communicate with her supporters. But there is no doubt that she continues to cast a long shadow over the military rulers who have prevented the elected representatives from taking their seats in a reconstituted Pyithu Hlutaw (national assembly), to which they were elected, and forming a legal government. If the election was intended to be an example of a Burmese version of Indonesian wayang (shadow play) with the soldiers-in-power acting as the dalang (puppeteer) moving the puppets (the parties and leaders) behind the lighted cloth and controlling their speech, it proved to be a revolt of the audience who voted against the military and for the party of Aung San Suu Kyi. Although she was not a candidate – despite appeals by foreign governments and international human rights groups to lift the ban against her participation – she is the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and, as such, the people wait impatiently for her to be released from imprisonment, assume the leadership of the nation and fulfil their belief that she is Burma’s woman of destiny.
Who is Aung San Suu Kyi and how does one account for her meteoric rise and continued popularity in a country where the military has dominated all aspects of life for the past twenty-nine years and where no woman in modern times has ever been seriously considered for national leadership? Is she destined to wear the mantle of leadership that her assassinated father dropped more than forty years ago or is she a fleeting phenomenon?
There are no real cultural impediments to a woman as a leader in Burma. Throughout its history, women have enjoyed equality with men in the household and the economy. Marriage was and is a civil act; women retain their own names during marriage, and divorce is a simple procedure with no stigma attached to either party. More important, women have always had the right of inheritance. Only in Buddhist religious terms were they considered inferior. In commenting on the relationship of the sexes in Burma, a modern Burmese woman – who played a leading role in the nation’s history – wrote:
We like to give precedence to our men in our own homes because we acknowledge them, until their death, as head of household. Possibly we can afford to offer this courtesy because we are secure in our rights and status. But part of the deference we offer them stems from the influence of Buddhism … We believe when a new Buddha comes to the world it will be as a man (though, to be sure, one of us who is now a woman may, in later life, be born as a man and eventually progress to Buddhahood). We feel that this gives men an inherent superiority: mentally, they can reach higher than women.2
In Burmese history, there are instances where women attained positions of power and influence. For example, in the Pegu kingdom, during the fifteenth century, Shin Saw Bu succeeded to the throne and, upon retirement, devoted herself to religion and merit-making. In the Konbaung dynasty, during the nineteenth century, Supayalat, the queen of Burma’s last king, exercised great power over her husband and was reported to have worked closely with royal councillors in deciding matters of state.
During the colonial period, Burmese women held important positions in the professions and even in politics. In the 1920s women held offices in the Rangoon City Corporation, and in the last year of that decade a woman was elected to the Legislative Council. The Students’ Union at Rangoon University – the incubator of Burmese nationalist leaders – included women in its leadership from the outset, and women students participated alongside men in the 1936 strike.3 Following the introduction of the new constitution in 1937, a woman was elected to the legislature. An outstanding woman of the period was Daw Mya Sein, a scholar, author, teacher, wife and mother. The daughter of a distinguished jurist and scholar, she was chosen to represent Burmese women at a special Burma Round Table Conference in London 1931, and, later, on the eve of the Second World War, to lead a delegation to China.
After the Second World War, a few women were active in politics, administration and diplomacy, but none achieved national prominence by holding high government or party positions. In the election to the 1947 Constituent Assembly three women won seats, while four others were added as replacements for their assassinated husbands.4 Following independence, two were elected in 1952 in the first national election; four years later, five won seats; and in 1960 three were elected. None achieved cabinet rank or leadership in the parliament. Because of the unique federal constitution of Burma in that period, the Prime Minister was responsible for selecting the representatives of the states in his cabinet. Those whom he chose also served as heads of their states. In 1953 Prime Minister U Nu named Mrs Ba Maung Chein to represent the Karen State, making her the first and only woman to reach cabinet rank. Later, she broke with the Prime Minister and led the opposition in her state.
From the colonial period onwards, women’s organizations were attached to political parties. The post-Second World War dominant party, the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), included the Women’s Freedom League. While its leaders were given administrative posts, they never became a major factor in party politics. Until 1960 no woman served as head of a diplomatic mission. In that year Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother, Daw Khin Kyi, was named ambassador to India and held the post until 1967.
Countless women participated in the nationalist struggle of the colonial period and many worked closely with the men who were the leaders. But they never achieved leadership in their own right. Under the military dictatorship, which began in 1962, women played a much smaller political role. Nine were elected in 1974 to the first Pyithu Hlutaw under the new constitution, and thirteen won seats four years later. During this period, the military dominated all aspects of government and the political party it created. Women were and continue to be in the armed forces, but none has attained command or senior levels.
Although Aung San Suu Kyi has instant name recognition and acceptance as the daughter of a national hero, she has a number of qualities of her own which prepared her well to sustain her in the political arena in her own right. First, she is intelligent and well educated. During the first fifteen years of her life, she was schooled in Burma, where she developed her knowledge and use of Burmese as any other child of her day. Later, in India and Great Britain, she continued her education and in 1967 earned a degree at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She later learned the Japanese language, and during 1985–6 Aung San Suu Kyi was a visiting scholar at Kyoto University. In 1987 she was a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in New Delhi. At the time of her return to Burma in 1988, she was enrolled in the London School of Oriental and African Studies, where she was working for an advanced degree.
During this period, she found time to publish two scholarly works and several popular books. Her scholarly publications demonstrate a deep interest in and knowledge of modern Burmese history. In 1982 she published a long essay on her father, which appeared as a book; in 1987 she published a scholarly article on modern Burmese literature.5 Her most important literary achievement to date is her recent pioneering intellectual history essay in which she compares the Indian and Burmese reactions to colonial rule.6
Second, she was widely travelled. In 1969, two years after leaving Oxford, she went to New York where she was employed at the United Nations Secretariat. In 1972 she married a British scholar, a Tibetan specialist, Michael Aris, and while they lived in Bhutan where he was first tutor to the royal family and then government translator, she worked for the Bhutan Foreign Ministry as a research officer on United Nations affairs. Two years later the family moved to England, where her husband assumed an appointment at Oxford in Tibetan and Himalayan studies. During the 1970s and 1980s she made frequent trips to Burma to visit her ageing mother; while there, she had many opportunities to observe conditions at first hand – the decline in the economy, the hardships of the people and the corrupt authoritarian rule of the military. On the basis of her education and writing, her experience at the United Nations, in Japan, in India and in the Himalayan states, and her observations in Burma, she was better prepared than most to comment on and criticize the rule of the military and to argue for an alternative system – a return to the democratic ideas of her father.
Small and thin in stature, she resembled her father in many ways – a warm smile, strong facial features and piercing eyes, direct speech and a commanding presence. If she had no political skills and experience when she stepped into the peaceful revolution in 1988, she quickly acquired them. Dressed always in traditional Burmese clothing and speaking idiomatic and perfect Burmese, she quickly won the hearts and backing of the people who came to hear her speak and stayed to support her movement. ‘She speaks directly and with modesty,’ a Burmese shopkeeper in Mandalay told a reporter. ‘When we listen to the government leader, and then listen to her, I think every Burmese can agree about who is the better person.’7 From the outset, she sensed that the people in the streets, who were calling for change, wanted something new and different. Therefore, she refused to join either U Nu or any other older politicians who sought to head the leaderless revolution. Instead, she initially joined former Brigadier Aung Gyi and later they, together with former General Tin U, formed the National League for Democracy.
Aung San Suu Kyi never doubted that her immediate acceptance by the people stemmed from the fact that she was identified with her father. But she was not the only child of a revolutionary or independence leader to come forward to lead. Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, the daughter of a co-worker of Aung San and a leader of the former Socialist Party and the original AFPFL, and a senior cabinet member during the administration of U Nu, also stepped forward; but while she attracted a few to her banner, neither she nor any other was a match for Aung San’s daughter.
It is important to remember who Aung San was and why he holds such a special place in the memory of the Burmese people. He vaulted to national attention in the university student strike of 1936, and later secretly negotiated with the Japanese to aid the Burmese revolutionary struggle. When the Pacific War began he formed the Burma Independence Army and led it into Burma, where units fought against the British. During the war, when Japan gave Burma independence, he became Minister of Defence, but when he and others around him became disillusioned with the Japanese, he organized a revolt of the Burma army and joined with the Allies in recovering his country from the Japanese. In the post-war period, he led the nationalist coalition, the AFPFL, and won Burma’s independence through peaceful negotiations with the British. He was assassinated while leading the Constituent Assembly in writing a constitution for independent Burma. His death robbed the nation of the one man whom Burmans and non-Burmans alike trusted. No leader after him had the political support he engendered nor the ability to translate his vision of a united, peaceful and prosperous Burma into reality.8 In the midst of the peaceful revolution of the summer of 1988, demonstrators carried his picture ‘as their standard’.9
Aung San Suu Kyi shares her father’s belief in democracy and its achievement through peaceful means. Initially, she called for the creation of an impartial interim government to oversee a national election in which the people were free to form parties, choose leaders and contest for power. She saw no role for herself in this process or future government. ‘A life of politics,’ she said at the end of August 1988, ‘holds no attraction for me. At the moment, I serve as a kind of unifying force because of my father’s name and because I am not interested in jostling for any kind of position.’10
As a pragmatist, she responded to changing conditions, in both her role and speech. In response to the military’s seizure of power on 18 September 1988, she joined in the founding of the NLD and became its general secretary. She spoke out sharply against the murder in the streets of non-violent demonstrators by the soldiers as they consolidated their power. She spoke out strongly as the military increased its violations of human rights, intimidation and repression. She continued to call for peaceful change through free and fair elections, but this became more difficult as the military rulers began to arrest her followers and harass her. As she travelled about the country her attacks became more focused upon the behaviour of the military, which she eventually described as fascist, and an obstruction to peaceful change. By June 1989 she publicly accused Ne Win of being the real leader of the military government, the source of the people’s hardships and the man who destroyed everything her father stood for and tried to achieve.
In making the attacks upon the men in power and Ne Win as the force behind them, it was not her intention to weaken the military or split the army.
I know a split army is against the interests of the nation … We just want what my father wanted: a professional army that understands that a really honourable army doesn’t engage in politics.11
My father didn’t build up the Burmese army in order to oppress the people … He made many speeches where he specifically said, don’t start oppressing the people just because you have weapons. You are to serve the country. You are for the country, the country is not for you.12
She recognized, very early, that the military had no real intention of allowing free and open politics to flower. Registration as a political party meant the right to display a signboard, hold gatherings of less than five and obtain extra petrol so that it was theoretically possible to move around and build support. But, in reality, the decrees made it impossible to hold meetings, print and distribute party literature and say anything which might be construed as criticism of the military, present and past. Several times she said, ‘The law on gatherings is totally ridiculous – they allow people to register as political parties but then they don’t allow them to move … There is no freedom of the press. The government newspapers are attacking us all the time, but there is no way to retaliate.’13 By the time of her arrest she was a seasoned politician who became second to none in her forthright speech and her ability to debate with her opponents.
Like her father, Aung San Suu Kyi showed courage in the face of adversity. The military feared her popularity with the people and did not know how to respond to it. Even before the army-led coup, the military intelligence and police launched the idea that she was manipulated by the communists. They arrested Thakin Tin Mya, a former member of the Burma Communist Party (BCP) politburo and, later, central committee member of the army’s own Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), who they said was advising her. She responded by saying that while he was assisting with office work, she did not solicit and he did not give any political advice.14
In November, her co-party leader, Aung Gyi, made similar charges, saying that she was surrounded by BCP members and demanded that she remove them. Again, she denied any BCP influence on either her thinking or her actions and, backed by the other NLD leaders, expelled Aung Gyi from the party. But the charge would not go away; during the next few months the military spokesmen picked up and repeated the accusations. In June 1989 a government spokesman equated her party with the banned BCP, the first time that either Aung San Suu Kyi or her party was directly attacked.15 On 5 August 1989 Brigadier Khin Nyunt, head of the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence, held a press conference and launched a major campaign against her as a dupe of the BCP.16 Despite her earlier refutation of the charges, the military rulers persisted in this line of attack.
Initially, they overlooked her violation of their order on public gatherings. But as she travelled around the country and drew crowds in the thousands and dominated the political scene, they responded. First, they warned people away from her rallies and, when she departed after an appearance, arrested local members of her party. Second, they began to attack her personally with vulgar posters suggesting abnormal sexual behaviour; they attacked her as working for foreign nations, ready to sell out the country if she gained power; and they attacked her for being anti-Buddhist.17 She ignored the first, but responded vigorously to the second and third charges. During the spring of 1989 a political crisis began to build up as Aung San Suu Kyi spoke out more forcefully; the crowds at her rallies increased and foreign journalists sought her out for interviews and published her ideas and comments worldwide. On 5 April while campaigning in Danubyu, an army captain ordered six soldiers to load and aim their rifles at her; before the countdown ended an army major stepped forward, countermanded the order and prevented her assassination. Although local military authorities later told her supporters that they regretted the incident, it marked an escalation in the military’s effort to intimidate her.18
As anniversaries came due marking specific past attacks upon students, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party planned memorial celebrations. At the 21 June memorial, she and several students were in the process of paying homage when the military opened fire and killed one person. As tensions built, she called off a memorial service on 7 July, but planned to honour her father on 19 July, the date of his assassination. The military sought to control the ceremonies and invited her to join their leaders in marking the event; she refused, saying that she would honour her father in her own way. In the face of the tensions caused by this train of events, Aung San Suu Kyi called off her memorial visit in order to prevent bloodshed as it was known that a large delegation of students intended to accompany her. The next day, the military struck; they put her under house arrest and cut off all her communications with her followers and the outside world. They also arrested Tin U, the Chairman of the NLD.
In December 1989 Aung San Suu Kyi allowed her name to be put forward as a candidate for a seat in the forthcoming election. Although the Election Commission initially approved her candidacy, it was challenged by one of her opponents from the National Unity Party (NUP) – the new name for the army’s former party, the BSPP – who charged that she was in contact with dissident groups fighting against government forces. The challenge was allowed and an appeal was made directly to the Election Commission to return her to the list of candidates. However, on 17 February her name was not among those officially designated as candidates, thus indicating that her appeal had been denied.19
It is assumed by all who have followed events in Burma that if Aung San Suu Kyi had been allowed to stand for election, she would have won. But she was not allowed to run, and her leading supporters were either gaoled or forced into hiding for fear of arrest. In addition, the NLD had no leader with the prominence and support given to Aung San Suu Kyi and Brigadier Tin U; therefore, it had to rely upon local party organization and the bravery of the ordinary people to achieve victory in the face of harassment from, and intimidation by, the military.
Despite the obstacles created by the military to intimidate the people, the outcome of the election proved to be one of the real surprises to emerge under military rule. Although 234 parties actually registered, only 93 fielded candidates. Long before all the vote was counted, it was clear that the NLD was the overwhelming choice of the people. It won 392 seats in the 485 constituencies where elections were held. Twenty-six other parties won seats, with the NUP winning a mere ten. One leading Asian journal concluded that the election was not really between several parties competing, but a ‘referendum in which the NLD represented democratic aspirations while the NUP stood for the old system’.20 Even though Aung San Suu Kyi was not a contestant, it was clear to all that the people had voted for her and against the military and its proxy.
The victory of the NLD did not bring political change in Burma. From the outset, the military did not indicate whether it really planned to transfer power immediately after the election or at some unknown future date. However, while its spokesmen said both, they generally argued that the election would only produce a constituent assembly with a mandate to write a new constitution. After the new constitution was written and approved by the people and became the law of the land, a second election probably would be held to fill the offices created by the new basic law. As they embellished the theme, they argued that the new constitution had to produce a strong government, had to guarantee the unity of the state and would have to have the approval of all 135 minorities resident in the land. Only then would power be transferred. In the meantime, the military continues to rule under its decrees, and democracy will have to wait before it is reintroduced.
But all the elected members of the national assembly were not content to wait. With Aung San Suu Kyi still silenced and under house arrest and the successor head of the party, U Kyi Maung, and others also arrested, tried and given prison sentences, the military systematically sought to destroy its popular political rival. In the face of intimidation and arrest of leaders and supporters of other opposition parties, as well as those of the NLD, elected members to the national assembly who were still free held a secret meeting in Mandalay in November and decided some should try and make their way to the border area, where the minorities in revolt held control, and form a provisional government. On 18 December 1990 seven who got to their destination, Manerplaw, the headquarters of the Karens, proclaimed a rival government to the military. The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) was led by Dr Sein Lwin, a cousin of Aung San Suu Kyi, and it was given the backing of the Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), a broad coalition of ethnic parties and religious groups who seek a peaceful end to the civil war and a return to civilian democratic rule in Burma. The NCGUB argued that since its members had been elected by the people and given a mandate to participate in governing as well as in writing a new constitution, they took the only course open to them in the face of the endless reign of terror inflicted on party leaders and the people by the military. With legal and moral force, and the backing of the DAB, they seek to fill the void in political leadership and to unite Burmans and minorities in a truly national coalition against military rule.
All these events took place while Aung San Suu Kyi was and remains under house arrest and it is unknown whether or not she was consulted secretly and involved in shaping them.
If Aung San Suu Kyi had been permitted to run and win, what sort of leader would she be? Given her intellect and her emergence as a vigorous campaigner and excellent speaker there is no reason to doubt that, as leader of an elected parliament that was free to govern the nation, she probably would have no hesitation in accepting the responsibility and challenges imposed by leadership. Her power to inspire devotion and enthusiasm would be a major asset in getting support for the difficult and possibly unpopular choices she no doubt would be called upon to make.
It is not known if she was consulted either openly or secretly by her party either before or after the election. As a student of her father’s career, she knows well that he would not play by the ‘rules of the game’ as dictated by the British. If she were to model her leadership after his and was faced with a decree that the people who were elected on 27 May 1990 had but one duty – to write a new constitution – she would challenge the soldiers in power immediately and demand that those elected be given power to govern, as they constituted the Pyithu Hlutaw as defined in the election law. She knows that under the 1974 constitution, which is still in force, the Pyithu Hlutaw is the highest body in the nation and it alone has the power to choose the nation’s leaders from among its members and make laws. She would have sought to emulate her father in the period between 1946 and 1947 when he headed the Executive Council under British authority and later also led the Constituent Assembly in writing a constitution. She probably would demand the same dual responsibility from the current military rulers.
If Burma is to get beyond rule by self-chosen leaders and groups taking power at will, there has to be an early confrontation with the soldiers in power on this issue. Based on Aung San Suu Kyi’s short career in politics, she may be the only person presently on the political scene to lead such a fight. But, accepting that scenario and postulating her becoming the leader of the legislature and constituent assembly, what is known of her ideas, other than those expressed in her campaigns before her arrest?
Thus far, it has not been demonstrated that she is a systematic thinker with a well-thought-out set of goals and a plan for achieving them. Before her arrest, she had no time for quiet reflection as she sought to make herself known and to be identified with the creation of a democratic political system. What is known is that most of her remarks centred on a political process which any democratic system demanded if it was to function as intended. Thus, it is known that she stands for the protection of social and political rights which flow from the idea of a political system based on the will of the people. But what sort of system would she support? Clearly, from her campaign speeches, she did not call for a return to the system authored by her father.
A clue to her thinking may be found in the manifesto the National League for Democracy adopted on 6 November 1989. While it is not clear as to her exact input, it must be assumed that she was forced to consider the future when she might be called upon to lead the nation; and since the manifesto was made public and not repudiated, either directly or indirectly, it must be assumed that no document of this kind could have been made public without her knowledge and approval. Also, it must be recognized that this is a campaign statement and not necessarily a finished document which the author or authors offer as their blue-print for Burma’s future.
The manifesto is broad and seemingly all inclusive. It contains contradictions and ambiguities suggesting that it was either a compromise between conflicting points of view or hastily prepared and not carefully thought out. It begins with a strong statement in support of the principle of human rights and democratic procedures as found in the UN Charter and rests on popular sovereignty. The parliament, it says, ‘must have the right to exercise the sovereign power of the State without exception’.21 But it then goes on to contradict this by saying that the three traditional branches of government ‘must stand separate without mutual interference’. If the parliament is supreme, is the executive responsible to it; and, if not, in a clash between branches of government, how would the issue be resolved and in whose favour?
A second and more important issue, in the light of Burma’s civil war, is the future relationship between the minorities and the Burman majority. When Aung San Suu Kyi was able to speak out and was asked about this question, she always replied that once civil government was established it would not be difficult to resolve this question. In short, the peoples of the Burma heartland would first form a government and then would take up the issue of majority/minority relations as two separate and identifiable groups with separate interests. In the manifesto, the same idea is set forth with a little more detail. Only after the parliament is established, and prior to the drafting of the constitution, ‘the parliament will enact a law to form regional administrative bodies in the states.’ When the constitution is drafted it will incorporate the principle that ‘every minority will have the right to promulgate laws for its own region in the spheres of administration, politics and economies’. Does this imply a federal form of government or some sort of unitary state with autonomous regions with limited power? Only after ‘a democratic system is successfully adopted in the country’ would there be a conference between the Pyithu Hlutaw leaders and the minorities, on the model of the 1947 Panglong Conference, ‘to lay down the foundation of a democratic society’. Does that mean that the temporary system initially suggested might be altered towards a full federal or unitary state; and if so, can those minorities who disagree have the right to opt out? In short, it still is the same idea posed by Aung San Suu Kyi earlier – the organization of a Burman-dominated polity first, then, after the constitution is written, to begin negotiating with the minorities. With no say or participation in the parliament at the outset, the minorities will not be equal partners in the future state of Burma.
If the above interpretation is correct and it reflects the thinking of Aung San Suu Kyi, then she has departed as far as possible from the thinking of her father when this issue seized the nation at its birth. His goal was a federal state in which the minorities were full partners from the outset, sharing in governing the country before independence, in writing the constitution and in the nation’s future, whatever it might be. The issue of national unity has been the central issue in Burma since the end of the Second World War and it seems no closer to an acceptable solution now than it was at the time of Aung San’s death.
Is Aung San Suu Kyi Burma’s woman of destiny? It would appear so at this time. There is no other person who has achieved her status, love and respect from the people of Burma and the support from foreign governments who have appealed on her behalf. She is her father’s daughter – intelligent, honest, tough and fearless. Most of all, she has no past connection with the failures of the democratic government of U Nu or the corrupt, incompetent and brutal dictatorship of Ne Win and his military successors. By not allowing her to run in the first free election since 1960, the military may have inadvertently helped to raise her stature with the people. The coup leaders’ inability to give her freedom after she completed the initial year-long sentence, or expel her from the country, or take any action other than the continuation of her house arrest, can be seen only as a further example of arbitrary rule. In the face of three international awards for her fight for human rights and democracy in Burma and a growing call from world leaders to free her, the military rulers responded in the spring of 1991 saying that she can go into voluntary exile whenever she wants even though she could be charged with high treason and sentenced either to life imprisonment or to death.22 But no one is fooled by this act of ‘generosity’, especially since the military let it be known that her term of house arrest has been extended to three more years.23 Her strength and fortitude in the face of a corrupt and brutal military regime are an inspiring example for the people of Burma, who know of her personal sacrifices, and it gives them a model to emulate. It strengthens her ties with the people, who overwhelmingly chose her party to represent them in the future democratic government of Burma.
Silenced and unable to act while under house arrest, she is playing no part in the future constituent assembly that the military is slowly shaping and directing. Whatever its outcome, the people are likely to look to her for its approval or rejection, as she remains the people’s leader who was denied the right to fulfil that role. For many in Burma she appears to be the reincarnation of her father and destined to carry out his unfinished job of leading Burma into the modern world.
But if she is Burma’s woman of destiny, she stands to inherit more problems than her father imagined; and although she is intelligent and informed about Burma, she has given no clear answers to the questions of how democracy can be institutionalized, how national unity can be achieved, how the economy can be improved or how the violations of human and political rights by the military in the past and present will be rectified. The Burmese people have been in search of leadership since the death of Aung San and many believe that they have found it in his daughter. So long as she remains untried in a responsible position and isolated from the people, they will continue to believe that she is the one who can set them on a new course. But until she is given the chance to use her new-found skills of democratic politics in the crucible of parliamentary politics and bears the responsibility for her decisions, no one will know if she is destined to lead Burma towards a new and better life than its peoples have had or if she will be forced to compromise and accept the realities of Burma that developed over the past forty-three years.