A model democrat in Burma

AUNG San Suu Kyi is the dissident tailor-made for Western luvvies

Had she been so inclined, when Aung San Suu Kyi got her release papers from Burma’s junta last weekend, she could have left the dilapidated family home in which the generals incarcerated her for 15 of the past 21 years, and headed out for a stroll, as people like to do in the Rangoon dusk.

Turning right from her lakeside gaolresidence on University Avenue, it’s a short distance past the US Embassy and Rangoon University to busy Hledan Junction where, thanks to Burma’s chronic absence of jobs and diversions, the idle mill, gossip and grumble because there’s little else to do. The sudden arrival here on foot of a storied opposition icon would certainly have piqued curiosity, excitement and fear in equal measure. Would they have joined her? That would have been revealing at many levels.

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