Burma turns to Mother Suu and dares to dream

For the children of the Mingalar Orphanage, the arrival of Aung San Suu Kyi is the biggest day of their bleak lives.

Dressed in their Sunday best of white T-shirts and blue skirts or longyi, the sarong still worn by most Burmese males, they stand waiting in long lines under a blistering sun.

"Everyone is happy today because she is coming," says Thuzar Soe, a 20-year-old girl from Kawhmu township, the constituency for which Miss Suu Kyi is standing in next Sunday's by-elections which are almost certain to see her win a seat in the Burmese Parliament. "She is beautiful and clever and the most famous lady in Burma."

A convoy of SUVs arrives in a cloud of dust. Children and their teachers rush to surround the final vehicle. Miss Suu Kyi emerges into the scrum, shielded by bodyguards, a petite figure in a blue top and long skirt.

Her face is drawn and she looks tired until she smiles, when she appears suddenly younger than her 66 years. She stays only 15 minutes, but before she leaves she speaks to the children.

"I don't want to ask what you need before the election. But I will afterwards," she told them. "I promise I will come back soon."

The orphanage in Twante township, south of Rangoon, was just one more campaign stop for Miss Suu Kyi last week. She and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party are vying to win 47 of 48 seats in Burma's lower parliament being contested next weekend.

Not since 1990, when the NLD overwhelmingly won a national vote that was promptly overturned by the military, has the party been able to stand in a parliamentary election.

By the time of that year's poll, Miss Suu Kyi was already under house arrest in the then Burmese capital of Rangoon, where she remained for much of the next 20 years. In her place, Burma was ruled by a junta of repressive and eccentric generals. They crushed all dissent by imprisoning thousands, shunned most of the outside world and retreated to a purpose-built new capital, Nay Pi Taw. There they played golf and consulted astrologers while the Burmese people sank deeper into poverty and despair.

But in a startling and unexpected series of events which began with Miss Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in November 2010, the generals have swapped their army uniforms for civilian clothes and formed themselves into the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Led by President Thein Sein, the USDP has released hundreds of political prisoners and allowed the NLD to stand against it, as it seeks to have Burma welcomed back into the international fold. Now, the April 1 by-elections have become a crucial test of the USDP's sincerity in moving towards genuine democracy.

Miss Suu Kyi's presence dominates the elections and she is treated as a combination of a rock star and a goddess everywhere she goes. The day before her visit to the orphanage, about 10,000 people trekked out to wasteland in the Dagon Seikkan township, east of Rangoon, where she was to speak at an NLD rally. They came on tractors, bicycles and on foot: monks, mothers, middle-aged men, grannies, children, teenagers and students.

Many carried pictures of Miss Suu Kyi or her late father Aung San, revered as much as his daughter for guiding Burma to independence from Britain in 1948.

When Miss Suu Kyi stepped on to the platform the entire crowd surged forward, pushing and shoving for a glimpse of the woman still known as "The Lady", a euphemism used for Miss Suu Kyi when she was under house arrest, though she is now increasingly called "Mother Suu".

Yet when she started speaking, as much as one third of the crowd drifted away. It was enough for them just to have seen her.

A blind faith in Miss Suu Kyi is the reason why almost everyone to whom The Sunday Telegraph spoke said they would be voting for her party. "I love and trust The Lady. I don't know what she can do for us ordinary people but I believe she will do what she can," said Thet Naing Htun, a 27-year-old labourer in Lawate, one of 70-odd villages that make up Kawhmu township.

Yet even NLD officials struggle to articulate precisely what their policies are. Miss Suu Kyi is campaigning on a vague national manifesto stressing the need for a peaceful Burma and calling for reforms to the 2008 constitution. But she says nothing about how she proposes to end the ethnic violence that consumes the northern and eastern borderlands of Burma, or improve the lives of future constituents such as Mr Htun.

"It's very difficult to say exactly what she can do because she has no power now. When she has a seat in parliament, we'll know better," said Kyi Kyi Win, the NLD's campaign manager in Kawhmu township.

That change is needed is obvious. Kawhmu is an hour and a half south of Rangoon down a kidney-rattling road. Here, the shabby apartment blocks and crumbling colonial era buildings of the former capital give way to a flat landscape of rice paddies and wooden shacks where clean water has to be carried from wells and ragged children run around barefoot.

Along with many other areas in the delta region south of Rangoon, parts of Kawhmu were devastated by Cyclone Nargis in 2008. There are about 3,000 people in Lawate village but just 30 farms, leaving most men like Mr Htun with casual labour as the only job option. "I carry bricks and sand or work on farms. I earn 2500 Kyat (pounds 2) a day when I am working," said Mr Htun, who has a daughter and a pregnant wife.

In the more remote villages of Kawhmu, 1500 Kyat (pounds 1.30) is the average daily wage. "It's very difficult to live on my salary," said Mr Htun. "If the area had a factory, everyone, the men and women, could work every day. That's what we need, regular work." To lift people like him out of poverty, Burma needs foreign investment. That cannot happen until the US and the European Union lift economic sanctions against the country. A free and fair election on April 1 will virtually guarantee their removal. But while the election areas are plastered in NLD posters and flags, there are already ominous signs that the vote will be manipulated.

"I don't believe the election in Kawhmu will be fair," said Mrs Kyi Win. "The electoral register contains a number of people who are dead."

Despite the advance evidence of voter fraud, the NLD's chief spokesman, Nyan Win, said that he expected the party to capture 40 of the 48 seats being contested in the by-election. More neutral observers say it will win only half of the seats. But, either way, the party will be a small minority in the 440 seat lower parliament, and Miss Suu Kyi just another MP.

The experience of more than 40 years of military rule has created many cynics in Burma. For them, the ruling USDP party's decision to allow Miss Suu Kyi and the NLD to stand in the elections is merely a ploy to convince the West to end Burma's economic isolation.

That in turn will reduce the country's dependence on China, which is eager to strip Burma of its abundant natural resources. Some people mutter about President Sein being just a frontman who will be replaced once sanctions are lifted, or claim that the other ex-generals are deeply divided over the path he is taking.

Overriding everything is the fear that Burma will wake up one day and find that the return of Miss Suu Kyi and the NLD was nothing more than a dream, and that the nightmare of rule by the former generals has returned.

"We don't know yet if the move towards democracy is irreversible. We are just not certain about the changes going on," said Mr Win. "We still have no free press. We'd feel more confident if we did."

Some of the political prisoners released by the USDP in the January amnesty are also ambivalent about the future. Min Ko Naing led the "'88 generation", the students who rose up against the junta in 1988. It was he who introduced Miss Suu Kyi to national politics, when he invited her to address a half-a-million-strong crowd in Rangoon that year.

After spending more than 18 years in various prisons, suffering torture and solitary confinement, Mr Naing refuses to get carried away by the euphoria surrounding the elections.

"I was arrested for political reasons and I was released for political reasons," he said. "I'm not an optimist or a pessimist about the present situation; I always look to the reality. We're going the right way, but we have to push this situation to change things and we have to co-operate with the reformists in this government. The people have hope, but we have to wait and see what will happen."

Among the betel nut-chewing Burmese masses, the yearning for change is so strong it is almost palpable. After April 1, the NLD will be under enormous pressure to facilitate that, even while the USDP remains in power and the military waits in the wings.

Above all, it is Miss Suu Kyi who carries the weight of expectation. "She has sacrificed her life for the Burmese people and shown her love for us," said Mr Htun. "That's why I believe in her."