The Lady and the Peacock [antikvár]

PROLOGUE ''I IN NOVEMBER 2010, Burma was preparing for its first elections in decades. Aung San Suu Kyi v^as in detention in her home, as she had been for the previous seven years. Travelling across Rangoon six days before the poll, I had the luck to hail a taxi driver who spoke some English. I asked him, 'Are you going to vote?' 'No!' he said, 'I don't like it! It is a lie! They are lying to all the people, and all the world. They are very greedy! They don't know what democracy is . . .' Later he said that his wife was going to vote and he was under pressure to do the same: she was afraid that if they didn't they might be killed. He told me that he had a degree in Engineering from Insein Institute of Technology. So why, I asked him, was he driving a taxi? 'I am driving because I don't want to work for the government, because that means stealing. I want to work for my country and I want to do good. I don't want to steal! Money is not the important thing for our people. The important thing is to get democracy ' It was the strangest election I have ever come across. The party that had won the previous election by a country mile, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), would have been allowed to participate if it had recognised the new constitution and if it had been prepared to expel Aung San Suu Kyi and all other members in detention or prison. As the party decUned to do this, it was de-registered, becoming a non-party. The biggest party, which in the end won handily, had only been in existence for a few months: it was created by the simple trick of turning the Union Sohdarity and Development Association (USDA), a regime-sponsored mass organisation to which all government employees are compelled to belong, into a party, the USD?. The other parties running included small split-offs from the NLD opposed to that party's decision not to run. During the weeks of the election campaign, the mood in Rangoon was completely flat. There were no election meetings, no posters stuck up, no I',' i .j i I I, ./¦'I' I I,