Engaging a democracy 'icon'

The United Nations has done well to broker a political engagement between Myanmar's ruling military junta and its arch adversary and a phenomenal proponent of democracy, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, it is a measure of diplomatic circumspection that the global organization appears to have waited for this new reality to seem sustainable before announcing the evident breakthrough. Ms. Suu Kyi and the governing SPDC (the State Peace and Development Council) have held at least one meaningful meeting in recent months to begin addressing the intractable puzzle of how best Myanmar can be administered.

The aim of confidence building was at the core of the in camera discussions that the two sides have held so far under the current initiative of the U.N. The more tangible objective, discernible in the latest official comments at the U.N. headquarters, is to facilitate a round of preliminary talks between the SPDC and Ms. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) so that the two can try and agree to begin direct parleys on the substantive questions of how Myanmar should reorganize its constitutional order.

The message in Myanmar's contemporary history is that its military leadership, long used to being the government, will not be willing to transfer power to the people without a grim struggle. A parallel reality is that Ms. Suu Kyi has somehow been unable in recent years to recapture her earlier mystique of a messianic leader so as to unseat the military dictatorship through a revolution of people power.

This has not of course diminished her status as a democracy icon, although the SPDC seems to have skillfully resorted to the politics of manipulation within a societal framework of poverty and ethnic diversity in order to stay in power. The SPDC's top leaders such as Gen. Than Shwe and Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt are also aware of the political power of the gun barrel besides the potency of propaganda.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi