Aung San Suu Kyi in Singapore Wanting more – from The Economist

AT a press conference on September 23rd as she was about to leave Singapore after her first-ever visit, Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s opposition, spoke about the many links between the island-city and her homeland: the thousands of Burmese who live here; the many children of the elite who go to school here; the shared history of British colonialism. But if her hosts had hoped that she would cite Singapore as a role model for Myanmar, they were disappointed.
She conceded Myanmar had a lot to learn from Singapore, but thought the process could be two-way. From Myanmar, Singapore could learn a “more relaxed way of life and warmer and closer family relations”. For her, Singapore’s material success was not enough. For her country, she wants “something more”.
That there is more to life than GDP growth was something of a theme for her three-day visit, which took in two big set-piece speeches, a meeting attended by nearly 6,000 local Burmese, private encounters with government leaders and a visit to the Formula 1 Grand Prix, as well as to some longer-established Singaporean institutions, such as the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.
One of her speeches was to the Singapore Summit, held from September 20th to the 21st. This was the second of what may become an annual event. It attracts global corporate superstars and “thought leaders” from the ranks of academia and former government officials to discuss the future of the world, and Asia’s role in it. Cynics, noting that it is timed for the weekend Formula 1 comes to town, might think it an attempt to provide intellectual justification for business titans who fancy watching a Grand Prix.
Miss Suu Kyi is of course an extraordinary person. And she was certainly out of the ordinary as a Summit delegate. In her speech, she noted that she touched on themes that she was surprised to find omitted from most of the discussion: the importance of duty and spiritual values, for example. It is a fair guess that she was the only one so surprised.
“Rich people,” she explained in answer to a question from Anand Mahindra, an Indian tycoon, “are not very popular in Burma.” She confessed that sometimes she even wishes Myanmar did not have its wealth of natural resources—one reason the business world is so enthused by her country.
For their part, many in the audience may have been taken aback by how sceptical she was about the reform process in Myanmar. After all, her own presence in Singapore as a free woman, an elected member of parliament and leader of her country’s opposition is the strongest proof of how much Myanmar has changed since she was freed from her most recent spell in detention, three years ago.
People like to think of Myanmar as a success story, both because everybody likes a happy ending, and because it makes them feel good about their own roles. In Europe and America, that means believing that sanctions forced change on the country’s military rulers; in places like Singapore, it means congratulating oneself on the success of a policy of engaging with them.
Yet, she pointed out, Myanmar is still not a democracy, and neither at peace, nor under the “rule of law”. She and her party are campaigning to change a constitution which, besides debarring her from the presidency she hopes to assume in 2015, guarantees the army a blocking minority in parliament. She said many members of the government are betting that economic success will enable them to hold back democracy. “How quickly and reliably can mindsets change?” she asked, recalling that Myanmar has had half a century of military dictatorship and just three years of tentative reform.
And although ceasefires have been signed in most of the score of ethnic conflicts that have simmered since independence in 1948, a comprehensive peace deal remains a distant dream. She identified this—“national reconciliation”—as the biggest task facing Myanmar.
She dodged, in what has become a practised way, a question about what is currently themost serious ethnic conflict, involving the Rohingya minority, who are Muslims. For almost all Burmese, the Rohingyas are in a different category from recognised ethnic minorities. They are regarded as illegal immigrants. As always, Miss Suu Kyi sidestepped this gulf in perceptions. The basic problem, she said, was the lack of the rule of law. And she urged the audience to see it less as a simple “black-and-white” issue.
Miss Suu Kyi is a serving politician now, and even abroad, her remarks are probably aimed primarily at a domestic audience, with the decisions to be made in 2015 in mind. If Myanmar’s people are allowed their say, Miss Suu Kyi will indeed become president. But her many foreign admirers are beginning to learn that she cannot be all things to all people, and may not be as easy a leader to deal with as they might have dreamed.
(Picture credit: AFP)
Read more on http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/09/aung-san-suu-kyi-singapore