Suu Kyi’s party cleared to go legit
Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi hands out donations to Buddhist monks at the National League for Democracy (NLD) headquarters in Rangoon on Dec. 8, 2010. Over a thousand Buddhist monks and nuns gathered to receive a yearly donation from the NLD.
At long last, Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is set to legitimize her party.
Her National League for Democracy party is, of course, already legit in the eyes of the Western world. But the army-backed government, which annulled the party's landslide 1990 electoral victory, has finally recognized her camp as well after two decades of harassing and imprisoning its supporters.
According to China's Xinhua news outlet, Burma's state-run media has already announced the decision to let her party register. Nearly 50 seats in parliament are up for grabs in a coming by-election, though officials haven't announced the date.
Whether politics will tarnish Aung San Suu Kyi's practically unblemished reputation — a possibility raised in this Global Post article last week — is yet to be determined.
Our larger package on Burma's stunning wave of reforms, Burma Rebooted, is here.