Natmauk , Myanmar---Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi addressed a crowd of thousands Friday in the biggest celebrations honouring her independence hero father in memory, underscoring her legacy months before leading the opposition to momentous elections.
In scenes reminiscent of her triumphant election campaign three years ago, Suu Kyi addressed a huge crowd in her father's central Myanmar birthplace, with many supporters waving her party flag or portraits of Aung San as an earnest young revolutionary in a military cap.
"If we want to inherit from my father, we have to build a real democratic nation," said an emotional Suu Kyi, adding that his "sincerity" had ensured his legacy endured.
Known affectionately as "Bogyoke", or General, Aung San is adored in Myanmar and credited with unshackling the country from colonial rule and embracing its ethnic minorities in a vision of unity that unravelled catastrophically in the military-dominated decades that followed his assassination.
Suu Kyi was just two at the time of his death in 1947.
Thursday's rally marking the centenary of Aung San's birth in Natmauk -- a remote town nestled in the dusty plains of central Myanmar -- is the centrepiece of countrywide celebrations that are far more extensive than previous years.
People camped out overnight to see "the Lady", as Suu Kyi is known, many sleeping on the ground in the local pagoda, on roadsides or in their cars in the farming town.
The celebrations come as Myanmar awaits a breakthrough general election later this year seen as a crucial test of the country's emergence from military rule.
- Family affair -
Images of Aung San have been deeply entwined with the political rise of his Nobel laureate daughter since her release from house arrest over four years ago.
Suu Kyi frequently referenced her family link while campaigning for the 2012 by-election that swept her into parliament for the first time.
"Being the daughter of Bogyoke Aung San is one of the reasons that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has reached the position she is in today. It's not the only reason, but it is one of them," Nyan Win, the spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, told AFP. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.
Nyan Win said that with a poll date yet to be announced, campaigning has not officially begun and the party is not yet in election mode.
"It's logical for politicians to try to draw some kind of support or inspiration from what he (Aung San) did," said Trevor Wilson, an academic at Australian National University and former ambassador to Myanmar.
But he said no single party had "exclusive rights" to the former leader, who is also seen as the father of the country's powerful army.
Public reverence for Aung San was kept muted under the junta that kept his daughter locked up for the best part of two decades, away from her two sons and dying husband.
But a quasi-civilian regime that came to power in 2011 has ushered in a new era of political openness -- although a clause under the junta-era constitution still bars Suu Kyi from the presidency.
AFP
