Perspective: Did the World Get Aung San Suu Kyi Wrong? | Amanda Taub

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Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s champions in the West seemed to overlook signs that she might not be a paragon of liberal democratic values after all.

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: The New York Times
By Amanda Taub/Max Fisher | October 31, 2017

WASHINGTON — This is not the happy ending we were led to expect.

When Myanmar elected Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party to power in 2015, she was widely portrayed as a sort of political saint, an icon who had endured great suffering to guide her people from dictatorship to democracy.

President Barack Obama praised her. Hillary Clinton embraced her in public. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, once compared her favorably to Gandhi.

Today Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, is the target of worldwide criticism for standing by as her country’s military wages a campaign of murder, rape and torture against the Rohingya minority group.

Though her fall from grace was exceptionally spectacular, this is a common story. Western leaders champion individuals, often activists who have made heroic sacrifices, as the one-stop-shopping solution to the problems of dictatorship or shaky new democracy.

In their zeal to find a simple solution to the complex problem of political change, they overlook their heroes’ flaws, fail to see the challenges they will face in power, and assume that countries are the products of their leaders, when it is almost always the other way around.

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