Fresh faces of old guard ready to take on Suu Kyi

In a small campaign office below a Buddhist temple, 38-year-old Lei Lei Aye explained why she will win her by-election in Rangoon's Taung Nyant township on Sunday — one of 45 contests that could herald a new dawn for Burma.

The people will vote for her because her party, President Thein Sein's Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), is putting "democracy into action, rather than just talking about it", she said.

It is a bold claim because she and her colleagues are facing the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's best known "democracy idol" who is widely expected to win a landslide victory.

But Lei Lei and a new generation of government supporters, many of them Western-educated, believe Suu Kyi has no monopoly on democracy and may not win as convincingly as predicted.

Lei Lei joined the governing party's charitable wing at Yangon University in the mid-1990s, and waged a campaign to improve her district of the former capital.

She has organised the building of nine schools, three clinics and helped more than 6,000 local people get free hospital treatment. She has won funding to upgrade public lavatories and construct nine temples, four mosques and nunneries. "I got free treatment for 6,301 people in the clinics and free funerals for 165. My microcredit service has provided loans for 4,711 families. I will win," she said. She has helped more people than her husband got votes in the constituency when he won the seat in 2010 elections, and she believes voters will care more for her good work and President Thein Sein's reforms than the sacrifice and profile of Miss Suu Kyi.

Sonny Nyunt Thein, the head of Myanmar Egress, a think-tank behind many of the president's recent reforms, believes the USDP will win several seats where it has good candidates and will benefit from Thein Sein's unexpected rush for reform.

Since August last year when the president met Miss Suu Kyi, he has released most political prisoners, struck a series of ceasefires in wars with ethnic rebel groups, relaxed media controls and censorship and persuaded the NLD leader to return her party to electoral politics.

Despite Miss Suu Kyi's widespread popularity, Mr Thein believes the president's party will win support for leading the reforms and for distancing himself from the former military regime.

"It's a new government, a new set-up with new institutions. Everyone has been talking about the issue [of democracy] for years and he wants it to be settled.

Thein Sein's reforms had their roots in a Seven Step Programme supported by the former dictator Than Shwe in 2004, which envisaged a "disciplined democratic system" through a new constitution and elections. But none of the leaders who succeeded him until Thein Sein, a former general himself, managed to implement it, he said.

There has been widespread concern that his move towards democracy might not have the support of hardliners within the military - a fear voiced by Miss Suu Kyi yesterday - but the president is in complete control, Mr Thein said, and the generals have no desire to interfere in politics.

"He is a good listener. He listened to us. We did encourage him to make all this happen but he has a free hand.

"This is his time, there is no one above him, he's fully in charge and I believe he has the full support of the military," he said.

Although the president admires the development of neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, it is Indonesia which has had the greatest influence - by inspiring him to reserve 25% of parliamentary seats for the country's military. Suu Kyi has strongly criticised this and said she would use her party's position in the parliament after the by-elections to persuade the military that it is in its interests to withdraw from politics altogether.

She launched a strong attack on the government yesterday, accusing officials of waging a campaign to sabotage her party's election campaign and calling on European Union monitors to investigate irregularities and intimidation in the campaign.

"I hope they will take into consideration the fact that the freeness and fairness of an election does not depend merely on the day of the polling itself but on what went before that day and I hope you will find out as much as possible about what's been taking place over the last couple of months," she said in her first appearance since she fell ill from exhaustion earlier this week.

She also cast doubt on whether she would support the lifting of sanctions after the elections if victorious and warned that no foreign investment would be profitable without the rule of law. "Let's wait and see," she said.

Back in Rangoon's Taung Nyant township, Lei Lei, was reciting her lines for today's final day of campaigning. "All the people of Myanmar appreciate the president because he is giving people democracy. I'm not worried about Aung San Suu Kyi," she said.