Nowadays, so many leaders all around the world and all own their personality traits and own way to lead the people. Among them, I would like to choose the one leader as my admired most and love the way of leading. She is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from Myanmar.
Some people call her as a politician, some call she is an author or a diplomat. Also, she is famous as the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize. In Myanmar, she is not only famous as the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party but also as the youngest daughter of General Aung San who is the founder of Myanmar’ Tatmadaw ( Myanmar’s Military) and Daw Khin Kyi who is the first woman Burmese Ambassador for foreign mission. She arouses Myanmar people who suffering a lot under Military to know their rights and to get opportunities to build the real democracy.
Who is Aung San Suu Kyi ? Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is the first state counsellor of Myanmar and winner of the Nobel Peace prize in 1991. Myanmar people call her Amay Suu (Mother Suu) or Daw Suu (Aunty Suu). She was born on June 19th, 1945 in a small village near Yangon, Myanmar. She has three siblings. They are her eldest brother Aung San Oo , the second elder brother.Aung San Lin and youngest sister Aung San Chit.
Her second brother, Aung San Lin died at eight because of drowning in their house’s ornamental lake and Ms. Aung San Chit died few days later after her birth. Her eldest brother Aung San Oo applied the United States citizenship and he is an apolitical man who is currently working as an engineer. So, only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi became the political heir of her great father.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her hammy lifeDaw Suu’s father, Aung San is a guileless and justly leader of Myanmar. Everyone still admires him widely because of his rectitude and giving his life for the country. He never luxuriated and ever rebuked the improper manners of government. We can say Aung San Suu Kyi inherits Aung San’s mindset.
They have not much been possessed and just lived as a normal life, even though her father is the one who brought the Myanmar’s independence from British Colony. When her father was assassinated on 19th July, 1947, their family started facing the turning-point in their life. After her father passed away, the government appointed her mother as a Myanmar’s Ambassador to India in 1960. Even though her mother was a first woman in the country who serve the diplomatic mission, everyone knew that there had so many political tricks behind this.
Their real purpose of sending her away is to eradicate all traces of General Aung San’s memory and to eliminate the political conflicts when Aung San’s generation participates in politics.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi attended the high school in New Delhi and she graduated a degree in politics in India. In 1967, she obtained the bachelor of Art in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at the Oxford University. Then, graduated with Bachelor of Art in 1967. After that, she graduated with a 3rd and M.A degree in politics. That moment, she worked at the United Nations for budget matters.
In 1972, she married Dr. Michael Aris who is a scholar of Bhutanese studies. She gave birth to their two sons , Alexander Aris and Kim.During 1980s , Aung San Suu Kyi was trying for the Master of Philosophy. In 1990, She was chosen by St Hugh as an Honorary Fellow. She worked for the government of the Union of Myanmar. Also, studied in IIAS (India). Her life seems to be a processing as a flow before the biggest turning again in her life.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar to care her unwell mother in 1988. Her mother died at the age of 76. Even though she lived in abroad, she knew very well about Myanmar people, dictatorship and what we need to change.
That knowing made her stay in Myanmar and let her fight for the right of Myanmar people. She started speaking out in public to resist the repression and to get the real democracy. When she just spoke out, the university students, the monks and the public started following her and tried to fight back for democracy. The downtrodden people got the leader who has no fear and can sacrifice her life for them.
For junta, this is the one they have been afraid and cannot let it keep happen. In July 1989, Myanmar military placed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and tried to cut off the communication with the outside world. Also, the military government denied her husband entry visas.
They tried to make the deal with her about they would release her if she will leave the country and quit the political campaign against them. But Daw Suu denied this and keep insisted till they released the country and to become a civilian government. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party won 392 seats among 492 in the 1990 Myanmar election, but the Myanmar Junta denied the results. Even though they bullied and cheated to public and Daw Suu, it made more encouragement to Daw Suu Kyi stay strong on her aim. For her non violent democracy efforts, she was selected as the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In 1997, her husband suffered prostate cancer and Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II appealed to grant visa to meet his wife at the last stage of his life. Myanmar government denied this with the reason of country has no facilities to take care him and instead urged her to leave the country. She refused that because she knew very well that she will never get the chance to re-enter after she left even though they assure that she could return. Till 2010 she was faced the house arresting several times. Also, the dictators created the deliberate crash and intended to assassinate her. Moreover, her eldest brother sued her to get their parent’s home which her house arrested place. According to the Myanmar’s Act, he has no more right to inherit to that house because of he already immigrated.
He failed at this lawsuit and the junta covered this. Because there were cooperation between the junta, her brother and sister in law.This lawsuit intended Daw Suu to leave the country.
She has never released her nonviolent resistance in any circumstance. After faced such hideous situations, she could build the civilian government. Her party won in the 2016 election and she became the state counsellor (the de facto prime minister) of Myanmar.Aung San Suu Kyi and her effective leadership traitsAccording to her personality and leadership style, Aung San Suu Kyi’s personality traits encompass both general personality traits and task-related personality traits as an effective leader. Her significant leadership traits are courage, self-confidence, assertiveness, charismatic, self-sacrifice, trustworthiness, high extraversion enthusiasm, passion and emotional intelligence.Aung San Suu Kyi was destined to be the leader.
During demonstrations of democracy in 1988, she played the role of a mediator between the government, students and people that she was reluctant to become the leader. People’s expectations on Aung San’s daughter were enormous and the country was desperately needing a leader. Under such pressure, she made the first public appearance on August 26, 1988. She spoke without notes, very convincing and very clearly, captivated the audience and was perceived as the true leader. Suu Kyi is a very self-confident leader which seems to go beyond her father’s legacy.
She is also very courageous and fearless. She withstood many hardships and pressures given from military government with unwavering spirit. Once, the dictators got the information about her democracy speech trip and they set the soldiers on her way to deter her work. All soldiers pointed the guns to her directly and they already got the command to shoot her. She walked straight up to the life-threatening armed force and just stood in front of them. Finally, a major ordered his soldiers to lower their guns and let her through the way.”When someone doesn’t have a gun in his hand, he or she tries harder to use his or her mind, sense of compassion and intelligence to work out a solution.
” (Aung San Suu Kyi on Non-Violence.2007).In the face of self-sacrifice and assertiveness during her house arrest, Suu Kyi remained assertive in her actions and words, and stayed focused on the bigger goal of securing democracy and human rights in Myanmar.
She stood by her convictions, and used the power of words even when she had no other resources.From the beginning of her political career, Suu Kyi was not afraid to stand up for what she believed in and was willing to put herself out there to fight for a higher cause. She demonstrated her assertiveness by againsting the military junta and advocated a nonviolent approach in the fight for democracy in Myanmar. Moreover, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is a real charismatic leader. Despite the controversy surrounding Aung San Suu Kyi, she is still an admirable and respected leader by many. She adopts the people-oriented leadership style. She had the referent power to influence her follower’s decision and beliefs. The reason why her followers trust and supports her is because she is their only hope towards achieving democracy.
Her strengths and personal sacrifices proved to her followers that she was worthy of their respect. She sticks by a non-violence movement to protect her people from harm and was determined to persevere on for her people despite many setbacks. Her charisma, spirituality and moral courage inspired not only her followers, but also the rest of the world.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is very enthusiastic person although she is 72 years old. She travel the world to meet with leaders and attend the national functions in different regions.
This act of her help Myanmar build good relations with other countries. Also, she has very strong emotional intelligence. She manages her emotions very well in every speeches and interviews.self-awarenessmanaging emotions ( interview , speech ) control emotionMotivating herselfEmpathySocial SkillsThe leadership works and achievementAfter Daw Suu’s civilian government took the position, she tried to reshape the discipline and annihilate deep-seated corruptions. This is not an easy task for her to transform the country which already adapted under military for more than five decades.Political Actions & ReformingDaw Aung San Suu Kyi first target is national reconciliation, military and public reconciliation. She ever mentioned about reconciliation and not about revenge for her suffers.
To establish calmness and domestic peace, the military participation also important. One of the well-known facts in political actions by Suu Kyi is her handling methods for Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. This crisis became well-known after 2012 Rakhine State Riots which started by a group of rohingya rape and murdered a buddhist woman in Rakhine. Rakhine people responded by retaliating which is killing and burning rohingya homes. The situation got worse as the time passed which led to recent terror attacks by rohingyas.
These rohingya activists are labelled as ARSA Terror group which may have ties to the infamous ISIS group. They raided police stations, many clashes with Myanmar military, burned the houses and killed local peoples. Myanmar military response these attacks with extreme cautions as there are several pressure from international that military is repressing the ethnic minority and causing genocide. To handle this situation and to let the international communities know the truth, Daw Suu formed the Rakhine Commission consists of five respectable persons led by Dr. Kofi Annan who is Nobel Prize winner, former Secretary-General of UN and chairman of Kofi Annan foundation.
City Development Under new government, one of huge changes is the public transportation in Yangon, which is the capital of Myanmar. New government planned to upgrade the three main transportations of city. Those are yangon bus service, yangon boat service and yangon train service. New government noticed the people are facing the traffic congestion problem every day and all these transportation system changes intend to reduce the traffic problem and to build the standard. Yangon bus transport system started on January 2017 and operated by Yangon regional transport authority. The previous government’s bus transportation service named Ma Hta Tha which managed by the Motor Vehicles Supervisory Committee.
Among city’s public transportations, buses and trains are very much usage and people faced traffic and not enough buses in their daily life. All Myanmar previous bus system used one driver and one or two assistants called spares who helped to get the passengers, to collect money and to check the driving safety. There had so many problems between drivers, spares and passengers such as drivers are competing to each other to get more passengers and as a consequence the crash and death rate increased. Also, the contentions between spares and passengers were everywhere. NLD(National League for Democracy) government’s Yangon Bus Service transformed this situation by not using spares any more and self service system. Passengers put the travel fees in the bus money box and need to click the stop button for their destination by themselves. During the changing from old to new system, volunteers stand by in every bus stop to help the traveler to get the right bus number and explain about the system.
For the private bus owners, the government accepted the return buses according to their models and issue the car slips. In addition, new government launched the school bus system in the places of traffic congestion worse. According to the city’s traffic polices report, select the schools which caused the traffic jam during rush hour and started the school bus system in those schools in June. It covered 30 percent of students and planned to next 30 percent in October, then the remain percentage will cover in December. Also the government has signed the contract with Korea to purchase 200 school buses to upgrade the current private school buses which are light trucks and Dyna which are not safe for the students.
Another two transportation services are also upgrading and these two become the convenient option for the public. Yangon water bus and railways become the reliable option for Myanmar people. Yangon water bus is operated in October 2017 by Tint Tint Myanmar company which is the winner of the Yangon water bus tender.Yangon water buses run every day with the three Australia service boats which cover 180 to 230 passengers, the three Thailand boats which can carry 60 commuters and seven local boats which covered 150 passengers. Daw Suu’s government ambitiously promoted these two services to reduce the daily traffic problem and people are really enjoying on this.