As Aung San Suu Kyi returns to Burma from her two-week tour of Europe, with its mix of the personal and the regal, she will have to begin grappling with the ethnic tensions that have been left festering over half a century of military rule. Shedding the 'prisoner of conscience' mantle, she will have to take on the role of a politician in a country that was always fractious but may become fratricidal. The question is whether the politician can become a stateswoman.
While Burma continues to be run by the reformist military regime of President Thein Sein, all eyes are on Suu Kyi. The democrat, who has restricted herself thus far to human rights and rule of law, cannot now evade addressing matters of identity and autonomy. Her ultimate challenge will be to work towards restructuring the Burmese state, keeping it unified yet addressing the demands of the non-Bamar minorities which make a third of the population.
The attention on Suu Kyi – her fight against the military regime, her Nobel Peace Prize, and the years of house arrest – which has sometimes bordered on adulation, has kept the focus away from the deep-set communal animosities that have simmered in Burma. The Nobel laureate likes to point to democracy and rule of law as the starting points in the journey to nation-building, and of course she is right. But experience from other societies emerging from autocracies indicate that she will not have time to equivocate, as the minorities push ahead with demands for self-rule. As a member of Parliament, Suu Kyi herself is now part of the state establishment of Burma which is challenged by nearly two dozen armed insurgencies, some ongoing and others in suspended animation.
Beyond democratic generalities, Suu Kyi must at long last articulate her opinion on the military's war against the Karen, Kachin, Wa, Shan and other insurgent groups. With hundreds of thousands of lives estimated to have been lost in the various internal conflicts over the last sixty years, the scarring is deep. There is animus against the national establishment made up of the majority Bamar, the community that Suu Kyi herself was born to. Repeated reference to due process and rule of law may not be enough as the clamour for regional autonomy gathers steam and as the military junta becomes defensive and its grip weakens. Though Suu Kyi will not have a handle on the national administration till after the 2015 elections, she will have to see how to address expectations of economic progress and development before resentments pile up.