Myanmar savours taste of democracy

By CAROLINE HAWLEY
ONLY a small proportion of Myanmar’s parliamentary seats are being contested in by-elections next month, but with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi standing for the first time, the campaign has considerable significance.
There is a joke they like to tell in Myanmar about a man with terrible toothache.
He goes to a dentist in neighbouring Thailand who asks: “Aren’t there any dentists in your country that you can vi­sit?”
The man replies: “Yes, there are. The problem is that in Myanmar, you are not allowed to open your mouth.”
But now, the Myanmar people are opening their mouths and,
after nearly half a century of military rule, they will make their voices heard at the ballot box next weekend.
The poll will not change the balance of power here, of course, but there is little doubt that, if the voting is free and fair, Aung San Suu Kyi will be taking up a seat in parliament.
By happy coincidence, we flew into Mandalay shortly after she arrived there on a campaign stop.
It felt like everyone had turned out to see her – from women in conical hats taking a break from the rice fields to city workers and shaven-headed monks on motorbikes.
There was even a Myanmar rock band there, young men with long hair in black jeans and T-shirts, waiting to clap eyes on the much bigger star.
In the hotel – when we eventually got there – I met a young man, a jade dealer, who had returned to Myanmar last year after 12 years in the US.
“Everything is changing,” he said. “We used to have a dictatorship. Now we have a parliament.”
But not everyone trusts the government – “old wine in new bottles” is how one man described it to me.
And at a pagoda in Yangon, a 67-year-old man with missing teeth looked around nervously to check for informers, as he told me of the hundreds of monks who had been arrested in the past from surrounding monasteries, and of the hopes he had in “The Lady”, as Aung San Suu Kyi is known.
Many worry about her security.
She does not have the heavily-armed soldiers guarding her that we saw being disgorged by the boatful to protect the president as he visited a famous pagoda on Myanmar’s beautiful Inle Lake.
What she does have is the respect, the reverence of vast numbers of Myanmar who cannot wait to vote for her National League for Democracy.
At party headquarters, crowds of supporters were busy buying up T-shirts of her and key rings – actions that only a few months ago would have landed them in jail.
And, suddenly, visitors are everywhere. Myanmar is bursting with tourists, enticed by its ancient temples, its myriad gilded Buddhas, its generous and gentle people and the fact that political change is finally afoot.
The opposition is encouraging responsible tourism, rather than package holidays that are likely, they say, to benefit the government and its cronies. – BBC