NEW DELHI: Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi today said had Mahatma Gandhi been alive he would have been “vocal” about his “disapproval” of India’s stand regarding her country.
“I think Mahatma Gandhi would have been very vocal about his disapproval,” the Noble Prize winner, for whom Gandhi has been one of the greatest influences, told Karan Thapar at CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate programme.
“I think he (Gandhi) would have stood by us…he would have insisted that India stand by us because that was the kind of man he was,” she said.
Suu Kyi said she felt “saddened” about India’s stand particularly because she felt close to India. “I was sad about it”.
In Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial lecture yesterday, she had said that she was saddened that India had drawn away from Myanmar in its “most difficult days” and hoped New Delhi will stand by her country in achieving democracy.
However, Suu Kyi said today that one has to be pragmatic about it because “I know that government sometimes take a path which is best for their country rather than best for others.”
Asked if she felt betrayed given her long association in India, the chairperson of the National League for Democracy replied in negative.
“No…No, I never felt like that. I don’t think we have the right to demand loyalty or support from anybody. We have to work for that loyalty and support. I felt saddened by it…that was all. It did not stay on my mind. There are many other things we have to think about and many quarters from the globe from where we have to try to get support,” she said.
To a poser, Suu Kyi, who has strongly advocated amendments in Myanmar’s constitution for free and fair elections, said she has no hesitation of standing for the presidency in the next elections due in 2015. “I don’t have any hesitations. What is this democratic politics about if we don’t try to win for our party and if my party wins, obviously I would like to be the leader of that party which means the leader of that government,” Suu Kyi said.
She said support of the army was crucial for taking her country to the “right path of democracy” without violence.
The pro-democracy leader also expressed her desire to see it “again as the kind of army my father wished it to be”.
“The powers of the army over the civilian government are woven into the Constitution. So it’s only with the willing cooperation of the army that we can move Burma along the right path to democracy without violence,” she said. -PTI
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