Like millions of others around the world, I felt jubilation as I watched newly released Aung San Suu Kyi greet thousands of her supporters. But I also felt a grim sense of déjà vu.
In 1996, I watched Ms. Suu Kyi speak to an impassioned crowd in the same place where she addressed them last Saturday, from behind the gate of her house in Rangoon. Months later, the military regime banned her public talks, rearrested her and confined her once again. But, for a brief period, she was allowed to do what she does brilliantly: talk and listen to her people.
It sounds like such a simple thing, but even Canadians know how difficult it is to produce a politician who inspires trust and a deep sense of civic duty. Somehow, against all odds, Burma has produced Ms. Suu Kyi, a gifted, galvanizing stateswoman. It would be tragic if the Burmese generals do not recognize what she offers them in terms of peacemaking and face-saving. In a country engaged in civil war with ethnic groups already calling for talks with her, Ms. Suu Kyi's participation in politics could save Burma billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and win the country new respect - and a lot more business - from the international community.
But it's hard for the generals to see the situation in such constructive terms, because they specialize in dismantling civil society wherever they can find it - in schools, universities, unions, the media, the health-care system, even the Buddhist monkhood. In Burma, to be an involved citizen means being brave - which is another one of Ms. Suu Kyi's talents: She makes ordinary people feel courageous.
Fourteen years ago, when she stood before the crowd, the immense wave of sound - the shouting, in perfect unison, of her name - was unlike anything I had heard before. When the roar hushed, she began to talk. I had expected her to be stern and forceful; instead, she was funny, eloquent and capable of making 3,000 individuals feel as though she had addressed each of them personally. For weeks afterward, during my travels in Burma, as people whispered her name and showed me their secret photos of her, I witnessed how one small, harassed woman and her political party were a unifying force in a country that has been violently divided since colonial times.
When I interviewed her just before I left, she repeatedly used the word "unity" and talked about the student dissidents, as well as the many ethnic groups battling against the junta from the Thai and Chinese borders. Surprisingly, she spoke warmly of Burma's military - not of the generals, per se, but of the army. I knew that her father, Aung San, had believed in the importance of military action against the British Empire. He was also a remarkable statesman: He had secured Burma's independence from the British while retaining them as allies against the Japanese during the Second World War.
But I was still shocked to hear Ms. Suu Kyi talk about how Burmese people, herself included, had traditionally loved their soldiers and respected the military. At that time, I enjoyed moral polarities, a good "us" against a bad "them." This was an indulgence that Ms. Suu Kyi, in half an hour of conversation, helped cure me of. She neither hated nor feared the men who had imprisoned her. She did not dramatize her house arrest; instead, then as now, she minimized the injustices she suffered and talked about the political prisoners who were (and are) suffering harsh sentences in prisons without adequate food, water and medical care.
In the days since her release, she has shown the same absence of rancour and renewed her call for genuine dialogue with the junta. Some political commentators have suggested that Ms. Suu Kyi's long isolation has left her woefully out of touch with her people and the world. But her critics underestimate both the quickness of her mind and the longevity of Burmese collective memory.
Certainly, no one has forgotten her, least of all the intransigent bevy of military men led by General Than Shwe. She is not afraid of him, but there is no doubt that he fears the change she represents. This is the woman who, hours after being released from seven years of house arrest, greeted thousands of people and spoke to them with feeling about the importance of the rule of law. "The rulers must be under the control of the people," she said. "I also wish to be controlled. That is how democracy works."
Karen Connelly's latest book, Burmese Lessons: A Love Story , was a finalist for the 2010 Governor-General's Award for non-fiction.