Aung San Suu Kyi says she wants to run for president
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Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is blunt and
unapologetic.
"I want to run for president and I'm quite frank about
it," she told a panel during the first day open discussion at the World
Economic Forum in Myanmar on Thursday.
"If I pretended that I didn't want to be president, I
wouldn't be honest and I would rather be honest with my people than
otherwise."
Suu Kyi's determination to drag her country free from the stifling
restraint of an military regime is finally being realized more than two and a
half years after her release from years of house arrest.
However,
two years into the presidency of Thein Sein, she says that the vast majority of
Myanmar's people are not seeing the benefits of reform.
"If
you talk to the man on the street, if you talk to people in villages, the great
majority of them would say that their lives have not changed since 2010. "
'This is a transformation time'
Her
assertion was backed by a number of people in the busy Bogalay Market in
downtown Yangon.
Win
Shwe stood in a long coat at the market entrance, raising his hand every now
and then as if to bless passersby. The 72-year-old was begging for a note or
two of the local currency, the kyat
"This
is a transformation time. But for poor people, nothing's changed. The
government mechanism is corruption," he said.
Sitting
beside her daughter nearby at a flower stall, Khin Than Win, 52, said: "I
agree that this is a transformation time. But I see that the streets and the
roads are wider than before. That's the only change."
People
"want to feel that they have been included in the process of change,"
Suu Kyi told the panel.
"And
that's nothing to do with the number of cars that you now see in Rangoon
(Yangon) or the number of magazines that you can buy because the vast majority
of our people have no access to those."
Suu Kyi: Amend constitution
To
clear the way for her presidency, Suu Kyi said the country's constitution had
to change.
As
it stands, the former political prisoner is ineligible to contest the
presidency because of a clause that bans anyone with a foreign spouse or child.
Suu
Kyi's late husband, Michael Aris, was English and her two sons have British
passports.
Asked
whether she was reasonably optimistic that those changes would be made, Suu Kyi
said, "I don't believe in indulging in optimism. Let me put it this way.
I've always said hope has to be backed up by endeavor.
"So,
rather than being optimistic or hoping that the constitution will be amended
we're going to work for the constitution to be amended."
But
while many see Suu Kyi as the country's best chance for the future, she's been
criticized for not being vocal enough in defense of the rights of Rohingya
Muslims in the western Rakhine State.
Human
Rights Watch has accused the Myanmar government of the
"systematic and wide ranging persecution" of the Rohingya who it also
says have been the target of ethnic cleansing.
Minister: Change needs time
Suu
Kyi says she has been speaking out "but it's just that they're not hearing
what they want to hear from me."
"I
cannot doctor my answers to please everybody. I have to say what I believe in.
And I believe that the rule of law is the first step towards any kind of
solution to the problem in Rakhine State and other parts of the country."
"We
must get to the point of reassessing the law to see if it comes up to
international norms or not."
She
added, "I would like all of the world to understand that we are aware of
the difficulties in our country and we're doing our best to cope with it. When
I say 'we,' I'm not talking about the government, I'm talking about ordinary
people in Burma."
A
government minister also on the panel said he agreed that the constitution had
to change, but stressed that decades of military rule had created binds that
would take time to unravel.
"We
need time. We are in the dark ages. The other system was in place about 60
years. We have an idea to arrange for everything we have to change, but we need
time," said Union Minister Soe Thane.
"We
have to untie the rope. It's very difficult but we must do it. We must think
about the democracy. We must think of the economic development of 60 million
people."
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