Suu Kyi says if NLD wins election she will lead Myanmar

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has claimed that she will lead her country if her political party wins the Nov. 8 election -- despite being banned from the presidency as her children are foreign nationals.

Speaking to India Today TV, the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader said she would head any government if her party wins the parliamentary vote.

“If the NLD wins the elections and we form a government, I am going to be the leader of that government whether or not I am the president. Why not?” she said in a network interview broadcast Wednesday.

“Do you have to be president in order to lead a country?”

A clause in the military drafted constitution bars anyone from the top job if they have foreign relatives, and is widely seen as aimed at Suu Kyi asd her late husband was British and she has two British sons.

That has helped create a quirk in Myanmar’s potentially historic general election: there are no official presidential candidates, and it is unlikely the public will know exactly who is vying for the leadership until after they've voted.

“You wait and see and hope I win the elections 100 percent to see what I have in my mind,” she told India Today.

The NLD had previously not announced who it would choose as president if it won enough seats, and the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party had been equally elusive.

In the interview, Suu Kyi -- who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 -- appeared to lay down a direct challenge to the country's powerful military.

It is the first time the NLD has agreed to contest a general election since 1990, when it won by a landslide but was not allowed to take power.

“The constitution will have to change to allow civilian authorities to have the necessary democratic authority over the armed forces,” Suu Kyi said.

The NLD will need to win 67 percent of the seats to come to power, as 25 percent of the seats are nominated by the army.

“I am sure they won’t like it. I don’t expect them to like it... But I do believe there are many members of the army who want what is best for the country and if we can agree with one another what would be best for the country then we can come to the arrangement.”

The reformist government, which was installed by the former military junta in 2011, has pledged free and fair elections.

But less than two months before polling day, that is looking less and less likely as complaints mount about flaws in the process.

Among the most serious is the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, a much-maligned minority.

The group was allowed to vote in both a 2010 poll and in 1990. Their exclusion this time around comes amid a rising wave of Buddhist nationalism.

Muslim candidates have also been excluded from the poll.

Among them is Kyaw Min, a Rohingya who contested the 1990 poll and is head of the Democracy and Human Rights Party.

Of its 18 members, 15 were denied the right to contest a seat in November on citizenship grounds.

The NLD has also been forced to admit that it failed to put forth any Muslim candidates for the election in order to appease a powerful extremist group led by Buddhist monks.

Win Htein - a senior party official - told the UCA News website Sep 30. that the party has Muslim candidates who are qualified but they were excluded for “political reasons.”

“We can't select them,” he said. "And Muslim candidates also realize our situation so they understand us."

Despite the ban, the European Rohingya Council still sees Suu Kyi as the best choice for Rohingya.

"When she was in the jail we prayed for her. She had quotations like 'Follow us and speak for our freedom.' Rohingya fought for her release," Ambia Perveen, the council's secretary for advocacy, told Anadolu Agency in August.

"But today, even though it appears as if she has forgotten us, we hope that Western countries -- who pushed for so long for her freedom -- will pressure her to do more to help us."

Anadolu Agency corresponent Joshua Carroll contributed to this story from Myanmar