Thousands attend Suu Kyi’s first rally

LOIKAW: Thousands thronged to see Aung San Suu Kyi’s first rally as the Myanmar opposition leader launched her bid for historic November elections by touring a remote eastern region seen as a stronghold of the ruling party.

Suu Kyi urged voters to think of future generations in her debut campaign speech on Thursday to a rapt audience in Kayah state, many wearing the colourful traditional dress of local ethnic groups, as her party’s first nationwide election bid in a quarter of a century gathered steam.

“What kind of country will our children will grow up in? What kind of education system (will they have), what kind of healthcare system? Will they have security? We have to think about these things,” she said.

Myanmar is set to go to the polls on Nov 8 in what many hope will be the country’s freest elections in decades as it emerges from years of military rule.

But while the army has stepped back from outright control, handing over to a quasi-civilian government in 2011, it has retained deep roots in the political system, with a quarter of the legislature ring-fenced for unelected soldiers.

Kayah is seen as a stronghold of the army-backed ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, which currently holds every seat in the state after local ethnic parties were sidelined in flawed 2010 elections also boycotted by Suu Kyi’s National League for Demo­cracy.

The veteran democracy campaigner, whose own constituency is in the rural hamlet of Kawhmu near Yangon, has predicted that her party will win a majority in the polls. — AFP