It was Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday yesterday and she was
celebrating it in Oxford. After collecting her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo
earlier in the week, Suu Kyi made her way to the UK where she spoke to
journalists and old friends. She visited the BBC World Service earlier in the
day, she says that the BBC was her lifeline to the outside world and gave her
hope.
Although the progress made in Burma is immense, we must not
forget that the transition to democracy is far from complete. Suu Kyi also
warns that all the progress already made could be undone if the transition is
not handled correctly. Currently in parliament her party control only a small
minority of seats; in the “Pyithu Hluttaw” (similar to the House of Commons in
the UK or the House of Representatives in the US) her party, the National
League for Democracy, has only 37 of the 440 available seats. Compare this to
the party of the government (the Union, Solidarity and Development Party) which
currently controls 212 of the seats and the military which is automatically
allocated 110 seats, 25% of the total. In any new constitution Suu Kyi and her
western allies will be demanding that the privileged position of the military
be slowly eroded away.
Yet problems in Myanmar/.Burma have been escalating in
recent weeks, the government has had to resist rebel armies along Burma’s
eastern borders. Ethnic and sectarian tensions are also flaring up between Buddhists
and Muslims along the border with Bangladesh. It would not take a huge amount
of violence to destabilise the government and hamper the transition to
democracy.
To see a country move from dictatorship to democracy is a
beautiful one, hopefully Syria can find an Aung San Suu Kyi to lead them out of
the darkness and into the light.
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| The Democracy leader in Oxford yesterday Source: ITV News |
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