Yangon (dpa) – Members of Myanmar's older generation remember the death of Aung San the way Americans over a certain age can recall where they were when US President John Kennedy was shot. Like Kennedy, Aung San was assassinated by rivals and the plot around his death on July 19, 1947 remains somewhat mysterious. “I was 12 when Aung San died,” said Daw Ni Ni, a housewife. “When I walked out on the street that day, everyone was crying.” Aung San was the founder of the Myanmar Army, which first allied itself with the Japanese occupiers in World War II and then switched sides to join the resistance. After the war he became the deputy chairman of a transitional government and the champion of Myanmar's struggle for independence from Britain. That independence was won on January 4, 1948, just months after Aung San's death. His daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, was only 2 years old, and was to have no memories of him, but her father became the defining personality of her adult life. “She never for one moment forgot that she was the daughter of Burma's national hero, Aung San,” wrote Michael Aris, her scholar husband, in the forward to Freedom From Fear, written by Suu Kyi in 1991. The couple married in 1972 and had two children, Alexander and Kim, who saw little of their mother after 1988, when she became the beating heart of the country's fledgling struggle for democracy. Aris died in 1999 in Britain, after being denied a visa to visit his wife for a last time in Yangon. In 1988, Suu Kyi, who spent most of her youth abroad studying in India and later in Oxford, where she met Aris, returned to Yangon to tend to her ailing mother who had suffered a stroke. After her mother passed away, she turned to tending her country's problems. Mass pro-democracy demonstrations were rocking Yangon, pitting protesters against the long-entrenched military establishment. Suu Kyi emerged from political obscurity to instant celebrity, bolstered by the Aung San name and a certain similarity to her father in her looks and straightforward speaking style. But Suu Kyi's honest oratory soon landed her in trouble. On July 20, 1989, she was placed under house detention, days after delivering a speech in which she openly criticized former strongman General Ne Win, who ruled from 1962 to 1988. She was to spend 15 of the next 21 years under house arrest before being finally freed on November 13, 2010, six days after the first general election for two decades. Suu Kyi was under detention during the May, 1990 general election, which was won by a landslide by her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which she helped to found in 1988. But the junta blocked the NLD from power for the next 20 years. Over those two decades, Suu Kyi became the darling of Western democracies, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. But at home her political prospects remained bleak, and in 2010 the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party won a clear majority in general elections. Things took an unexpected change for the better in August, when the newly elected President Thein Sein invited her for private talks in the capital Naypyitaw. The meeting paved the way for several reforming moves by the government, and eventually allowed Suu Kyi to re-enter mainstream politics and run in the by-election scheduled for Sunday. She is widely expected to win her contest for the seat in Kawhmu, south of Yangon, and become the opposition leader in parliament. She has been allowed to do so partly because the president sees an advantage in having her join mainstream politics, according to NLD spokesman Nyan Win. Significantly, both Thein Sein and Suu Kyi have been referring to Aung San as the historic glue between the military establishment and the emerging democratic forces. “In parliament Thein Sein said Aung San was unifying them,” Nyan Win said. “He said Suu Kyi was the daughter of our beloved General Aung San.” Suu Kyi has also campaigned on the Aung San ticket, juxtaposing her father's photo with her own as she canvasses for votes. “I was born into an army family,” she proudly told a rally in the Shan State. “I am the daughter of general Aung San, father of independence.” BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/zHtPO Tags: Elections, Myanmar, Profile, Suu Kyi Section: Features, Latest News, Southeast Asia
