Myanmar’s generals are blocking Aung San Suu Kyi’s presidential bid

BANGKOK — The first time US President Barack Obama met Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman long seen by the West as Myanmar’s rightful leader, he seemed almost giddy.

In his zeal for the perfect photo op with Asia’s top democracy icon, Obama even planted a peck on her cheek — a brazen and culturally awkward move in a highly conservative Buddhist nation.

Obama then proceeded to give a speech in which he mangled her name five times.

It hardly mattered. That was in 2012, an unusually upbeat moment for Myanmar. The broken nation (formerly titled Burma) had just begun its shift away from totalitarian military rule.

Suu Kyi, a living symbol of defiance to the army’s oppression, was riding high. She was no longer a political prisoner. And the White House’s long-held dream of seeing a US-friendly Myanmar led by Suu Kyi no longer seemed so fantastical.

Two years later, those dreams appear doomed. When Obama reunites with Suu Kyi this week, he will find giddiness is in short supply.

Suu Kyi is now 69. The White House knows the odds of her ever grasping true power are dwindling. And though concurrent US presidents have extolled her as Myanmar’s great hope, the White House is no longer backing Suu Kyi with so much gusto.

The cleptocratic military has long feared the eminence of Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, Aung San, who is credited with driving out British colonialists. Her mission to run the country has been repeatedly crushed by the army, which still lords over a civilian parliament.

In 1990, the army voided a popular election won by Suu Kyi and kept her in confinement off and on for the next two decades.

Today, her struggle persists.

As Obama arrives in Myanmar for a regional summit, the government is gearing up for its big legitimacy test: a free and fair election in 2015. If it pans out, Myanmar will get America’s seal of approval — an accomplishment that will unlock billions in foreign aid.

After a struggle lasting decades, Aung San Suu Kyi is now losing a fight to erase a constitutional clause, authored by Myanmar’s generals, designed to permanently block her from leading the nation.

Her last hope is that Obama bullies the government into letting her run for the presidency next year. But top US officials have said that Obama will assure Myanmar officials this week that their upcoming election can exclude Suu Kyi and still get Obama’s thumbs up.

Myanmar’s rulers have a long history of abuse, including brutal crackdowns on dissent and on ethnic minorities. This has cast Myanmar’s rulers as villains on the world stage. In the George W. Bush era, officials called Myanmar one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny,” a junior league to the “axis of evil.”

But the generals and their allied political camps are tired of this role. They too are courting America and subverting Suu Kyi’s role as the State Department’s self-proclaimed “powerful and principal interlocutor.”

Though Suu Kyi may become a victim of American realpolitik, she has also contributed to her own fall from grace. Back in the heady days of 2012,  one of her campaign managers told GlobalPost that reverence for Suu Kyi is “more like a second religion … as soon as they have a chance, people worship her.”

Suu Kyi’s image has since taken a beating. Long seen as a voice of the oppressed, she has remained largely silent amid several crises.

A wave of anti-Muslim vigilante attacks, often tolerated by authorities, has killed hundreds and forced one group — the Rohingya, ethnic kin to inhabitants of neighboring Bangladesh — into squalid camps patrolled by troops.

In another test of her resolve, Suu Kyi sided with the government over villagers opposed to the nation’s largest mine project, which is run by a Chinese state-owned weapons firm. When villagers protested at the mine’s gates, police attacked them with white phosphorous munitions — an assault that disfigured monks with ghastly burns.

(GlobalPost’s award-winning documentary “Promise & Peril” includes footage of the attack and its aftermath.)

“She said we’re illiterate farmers and that’s why we’re protesting,” said Sandar, one of the irate villagers living near the mine in Myanmar’s dusty Sagaing State. “She said we don’t understand her goodwill and we’re just farmers against a big project that will develop our region.”

“She’s not pursuing democracy,” Sandar said. “She’s madly pursuing power.”

Obama is expected to meet with Suu Kyi on Nov. 14.