Suu Kyi says she can lead Myanmar in 'right way' | WPN World People News

Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has for the first time after winning April elections indicated that she was prepared to lead the people of her country in the right way.

"If I can lead them in the right way, yes," Suu Kyi told the BBC when asked if she was prepared to lead her country when national elections are held in 2015.

In an interview with the Newsnight programme, Suu Kyi said her struggle for democracy had been worthwhile in itself.
On the first day of a UK tour, she visited the BBC World Service and took part in a debate at the London School of Economics.

She is on a two-week tour of Europe - her first overseas trip since 1988.

The pro-democracy leader was freed from more than two decades of house arrest in late 2010. The country's military-backed civilian government has started a series of reforms to open up the country.

Suu Kyi on Wednesday finally got her honorary degree from Oxford at the university's Encaenia ceremony.

Suu Kyi was awarded the honorary doctorate in civil law in 1993 but was unable to collect it as she was under house arrest in Myanmar.

The pro-democracy activist has studied philosophy, politics and economics at St. Hugh's College in Oxford between 1964 and 1967. After working in New York and Bhutan, she lived in Oxford for many years with her late husband, the Tibet scholar Michael Aris, and their sons Alexander and Kim.

Suu Kyi spoke at length with the BBC covering wide ranging of problems like ethnic conflicts, political reform and foreign investment in her country.

She warned foreign companies investing in Myanmar that they would be monitored and exposed if they did not behave in a "democracy-friendly, human rights-friendly" way and follow "best practices".

"And if they are not such companies and if they are doing business with cronies and with those who will use their new economic powers to consolidate the grip of the government, then I think we'll have to expose them," she said.

Suu Kyi denied she had been the victim of a "confidence trick" by the Myanmar's quasi-civilian government to get sanctions on Myanmar lifted.

The democracy movement in Myanmar had to depend on "our own resources to bring about change than to depend too much on external factors", she said.

Source: Southeast Asia News.net