Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) are now tantalizingly close to achieving real power in Myanmar. Yesterday the party's MPs, who won 80 percent of all seats in the election last November, were sworn in to the new parliament. But the snail-like pace of change as Myanmar moves away from military rule means that it will not be until April that Suu Kyi will have been able to put together a government and have had parliament elect a president to replace former Gen. Thein Sein. The Nobel Peace Laureate herself is banned from taking the presidency because of a constitutional change made by the military, which forbids the office going to anyone whose children are not Burmese. Suu Kyi's late husband was British, as are their children. She has, however, made it clear that she will be making the decisions in the new government and it is expected that she will be appointing a close ally as president. But the real power will rest with her as prime minister. So we have to wait at least another three months to see how robustly The Lady, as she is known locally, will address the pressing problems of Myanmar's minorities, not least the hideous military-backed oppression of the Rohingya Muslims. It is to Suu Kyi's discredit that she has largely ducked the Rohingya issue until now. Her reasoning is clear. The Buddhist 969 Movement, led by a group of fanatical and bigoted monks with an uncompromising nationalist agenda, has been the prime mover in attacks on Myanmar's Muslim communities, the most publicized of which has been murderous onslaught on the Rohingya. It is ironic that after the military junta canceled the 1990 election which had been won overwhelmingly by Suu Kyi and the NLD, Buddhist monks played a prominent and courageous role in the subsequent mass protests. Myanmar's generals later went out of their way to appease the abbots of Buddhist monasteries and woo rank and file monks. The effort was by no means completely successful, but the emergence of the thuggish 969 Movement, very probably with military encouragement and support, has created a nasty and dangerous element in the country's politics. The 969 monks originally stirred up local anger and prejudice against the Rohingya, leading the murderous violence against the helpless community while the police and army looked on and sometimes even joined in the savagery. While she has condemned the odious behavior and rhetoric of the 969 Movement monks, Suu Kyi is not yet in a position to go head-to-head with them. And taking them on will not be easy for her new government. A quarter of parliamentary seats is reserved for legislators appointed directly by the military and the key Defense and Interior Ministries remain in the hands of the generals. This arrangement carries the implicit threat that if The Lady steps too far out of line, the generals will once again crush democracy, calculating that the international companies that have already flocked to Myanmar to cut deals will discourage their home governments from throwing Myanmar back into international isolation. As prime minister, the ever-cautious Suu Kyi will therefore have to explore her limits. But she could lay down a challenging first marker by granting full citizenship to the Rohingya.
