Asiaweek: Headliners 1998

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Headliners 1998
Asiaweek (Dec 25, 1998 - Jan 1, 1999)

Aung San Suu Kyi: They were drives to nowhere. Yet for all that, Aung San
Suu Kyi achieved what she set out to do: keeping the cause of Myanmar
democracy alive. First in a car, then in a van, she set out to visit
leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) outside Yangon. Forced
to a standstill, she lived in the vehicles for days, daring soldiers to
move her. Her July standoff, shrewdly timed just as ASEAN ministers met in
Manila, turned the heat on the junta which denied the NLD's sweeping
electoral victory in 1990. Keeping up the pressure, she set the military a
new deadline to convene a parliament based on that mandate. A subsequent
official media campaign to discredit the Nobel laureate as a "menace to the
nation" only undermined Yangon's claims to political dialogue. Another year
of curtailed freedom has not dimmed the profile of Myanmar's most
recognized figure.
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Comments 1998:
"Ordinary people love and trust her. They have no idea whether her tactics
are right or wrong. The disillusioned people are those who have worked with
her."
By a veteran National League for Democracy organizer, 
talking about Myanmar dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
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