Aung San Suu Kyi: The Nelson Mandela of Myanmar?
By Ingrid Piper and Moni Basu, CNN/Nov 9, 2015
(CNN) ― She's the living symbol of Myanmar's long struggle for democracy and the country's most loved politician. Now -- and not for the first time -- Aung San Suu Kyi and her party are on the brink of making history.
The 70-year-old former political prisoner and Nobel laureate appears to have led her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party to a resounding victory in the first freely held national elections in 25 years. Suu Kyi herself was reelected to her seat in the Kawhmu constituency in Yangon.
Many believe the elections will bring an end to decades of military rule in the onetime pariah state -- and still more have pinned their hopes for a new era of democracy on Suu Kyi.
■The daughter of a national hero
The affection people have for Suu Kyi is partly due to her father, Aung San, a military officer who became known as the founding father of independent Burma (now officially known as Myanmar).
He was assassinated by political rivals in 1947, when Suu Kyi was just 2 years old.
Suu Kyi -- known to many today as "The Lady" -- spent much of her early life abroad, going to school in India and at Oxford University in England.
She never sought political office. Rather, leadership was bestowed upon her when she returned home in 1988 after her mother suffered a stroke.
■Suu Kyi's move into politics
After her mother died, Suu Kyi vowed that just as her parents had served the people of Burma, so, too, would she.
In 1990, Suu Kyi led her newly-founded NLD party to victory in elections, but Myanmar's military annulled the results and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the next 20 years.
But imprisonment couldn't restrain Suu Kyi's calls for democracy in Myanmar, and support for her continued to grow nationally and around the world. She has been compared to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison fighting to end apartheid in South Africa before emerging as president.
In 1991 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to democratize Myanmar -- an award she wouldn't be able to pick up in person until 2012.
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