Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is likely to contest an upcoming by-election, a party spokesman said Saturday, paving the way for a political comeback after years of exclusion by army generals. Her National League for Democracy (NLD), delisted last year for boycotting the first elections for 20 years, will consider on Friday whether to re-register as a political party, after Myanmar's president recently approved changes to the registration laws.
"The NLD is likely to register and also Daw Suu is likely to participate at the coming by-election," Nyan Win, a party spokesman told AFP. Daw is a term of respect. It is not yet clear when a by-election will be held, but there are more than 40 seats available in parliament's two chambers. Suu Kyi swept the NLD to election victory in 1990 but the party was barred from taking office, and it shunned last year's vote largely because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time.
Locked up for 15 of the past 22 years, the 66-year-old Nobel peace prize winner was released from her latest stint in detention a few days after last November's poll, which was widely condemned as a farce by the West. The new army-backed government has, however, surprised critics with a string of reformist steps, such as defying ally China by freezing work on an unpopular mega-dam in the north, and holding direct talks with Suu Kyi.
The daughter of Myanmar's independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, Suu Kyi took on a leading role in the pro-democracy movement in 1988, the year that protests erupted against the military and were brutally crushed. Widely known as "The Lady" in Myanmar, she became a beacon of hope for many in her country in the face of repression, but was widely feared by the military rulers.