Suu Kyi late husband was British, CNN said, and her children have British passports.
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“So, even with the people behind her, Aung San Suu Kyi will face problems – because if she tries to force her way with the military, it will be like banging her head against the wall”, Robertson said.
Suu Kyi was freed from more than a decade under house arrest in 2010 and Myanmar’s army instituted initial democratic reforms the following year, including freeing jailed dissidents and lifting a few free speech restrictions.
The Obama administration may view the NLD’s victory as a win for the so-called U.S. “pivot” to Asia-meaning a democratizing Burma could help counterbalance China’s influence in the region.
The NLD also won convincingly in the last elections that it contested, in 1990, only to have the results annulled by the junta. A quarter of the 664 seats in both houses are reserved for the military according to the constitution.
Astute Burmese and knowledgeable foreigners have dubbed the reform process the military’s retirement plan.
Then – perhaps surprisingly to many – there is growing doubt about Aung San Suu Kyi herself.
The announcement, made by the election commission Friday, comes on the fifth anniversary of Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, where the 70-year-old had been for the better part of 20 years. She has said she will run the country anyway, through a proxy chosen by her party.
She entered parliament two years later after the party swept a series of by-elections. Myanmar’s constitution bars anyone from the presidency who has foreign citizens in their immediate family.
The delay in announcing the NLD’s majority toned down exuberance among party supporters Friday, with the streets outside the NLD headquarters in Yangon looking as they do on normal working days.
She takes a regal approach to her followers. Despite the ban she has said she would rule “above the president” as the head of the party.
About 140,000 Rohingya live in squalid camps while thousands more have fled by boat, leading to a regional migration crisis.
Aung San Suu Kyi – in order to avoid alienating Buddhist voters – has been mealy-mouthed about condemning all this.
“It is not power that corrupts but fear”.
Suu Kyi is revered in Myanmar. If anything, she is reinforcing intolerance and an authoritarian approach to political leadership.
So far, the NLD has offered little in the way of concrete policy that would tackle Rohingya citizenship status or their resettlement and integration back into the communities they were forced to flee.
But Aung San Suu Kyi wants more than her parliamentary majority. Her father, Aung San, led the fight for independence from the Britain only to be assassinated in 1947, months before it was achieved. “Right now, many people in the country can not go to school or find a job”, says 29-year-old Zay Yar Hlaing, an NLD supporter in Rangoon, the former capital.
The victory completes her transformation from an icon of democratic struggle against a military regime that branded her a traitor to a political leader who now has responsibility for governing this Southeast Asian nation of 51 million people, which is trying to catch up from lost decades of underdevelopment and isolation.
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Despite the historic election, optimism may prove to be misplaced.
