Suu Kyi party set for Myanmar political comeback

sdgvfsagadsgsadgdsgs.jpg.crop_display.jpg

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party announced its return to the official political arena on Friday after years of marginalisation by ruling generals.

About 100 senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) were set to gather in Yangon to discuss re-registering as a political party, the latest in a string of developments in Myanmar since the first election in 20 years was held last November.

Analysts say the NLD's comeback would add to the legitimacy of the army-backed government, which is seeking to end its global isolation by loosening political shackles - but also increase the relevancy of the popular but long-excluded Suu Kyi.

"With or without Suu Kyi, as we see, Burma (Myanmar) is moving along. This is her chance to be part of that change," said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, research fellow at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

The NLD swept to election victory in 1990 but the junta stopped the party taking office, and it boycotted last year's vote mainly because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time.

The Nobel peace prize winner, who has spent 15 of the last 22 years in detention, was released a few days after the widely discredited 2010 poll and now appears to be planning an entrance to the mainstream political process.

"On the whole I think the great majority of our people will go in for re-registration," 66-year-old Suu Kyi told the BBC on Thursday.

Help from Obama

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has said he would send Hillary Clinton on the first trip to Myanmar by a US secretary of state for 50 years to see if Washington can 'empower' a nascent reform process.

Obama said in Indonesia that he made the decision after speaking directly for the first time with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and noted 'flickers of progress' from the Myanmar government but said that more needed to be done.

His announcement, ahead of an East Asia summit in Bali, was the most significant move in US policy on Myanmar in many years, after several decades of using sanctions to isolate the country due to its rule of fear.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/107954" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-df33bac4135f677c9fc7220b0b52116e" value="form-df33bac4135f677c9fc7220b0b52116e" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80066145" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.