A lifetime of frustration in Burmese politics has not wearied Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein. Her years as a political prisoner have not blunted her sense of humor.
“Some people call us the ‘three princesses,’ but to the government, we are the three witches,” she laughs as, free now, she walks through the gardens of her once stately, now crumbling colonial home on a hilltop in the Burmese capital.
The “princesses” — she, Nay Ye Ba Swe and Mya Than Than Nu — are too old for fairytales, she says.
They are princesses because their fathers were all prime ministers of Burma, part of the revered generation that fought for, and in 1948 won, freedom from British rule before it was snatched away again in a military coup in 1962.
The daughters have been friends since childhood, and have remained part of each others’ lives despite long years in prison and in exile.
All are free now, though they are watched constantly and regularly harassed by the military’s special branch and its network of undercover spies. Arranging to meet is still fraught with risk. The interview with the Guardian is the first they have ever given together.
The fourth daughter, Myanmar’s most famous democracy activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, remains under house arrest.
“She is like a sister to us,” Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein says. “Our fathers were the best of friends with Suu’s father.”
Nearly half a century since their fathers were in power, the daughters see themselves as carrying on their families’ work, still fighting for democracy in a country that has known it for only 14 short years of a troubled history.
They have announced their candidacy as secretaries-general of the newly formed Democratic Party, and will stand in this year’s promised elections.
However, it is a hopeless fight and they know it: three women, backed by a hastily created, barely funded party against the might of a military junta which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for 48 years.
They spend their days, and their shoestring budget, knocking on village doors, trying to convince people too frightened speak to politicians of the importance not just of voting for them, but of voting at all.
This is a country that has not held an election since 1990. Internationally, this year’s poll has already been condemned as a sham rigged to entrench military rule.
However, the daughters see merit in giving people a choice that is not the military and hope the ballot will be the first step in a gradual move to democracy.
They have seen too many efforts at sudden revolutionary change — the student uprising of 1988, the monk-led saffron revolution in 2007 — flare brightly, but ultimately fail amid military violence to be swayed by promises of instant reform.
Nay Ye Ba Swe says change in Myanmar will be slow.
“To establish a credible democratic system will take a decade or more. We need to go slowly, step by step, because we know we are facing a very tough situation. We just can’t go ahead and expect democracy overnight — we have to give it time, and make sacrifices,” she says.
Flawed though these elections will be, the daughters believe participation is better than boycott.
“I firmly believe ... without participating in this election, you won’t get democracy smoothly,” says Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein. “I want to change the system and the government ... but I don’t want to go through more bloodshed or a lot of people being sent to Insein [prison].”
The three women are saddened that their “sister,” Aung San Suu Kyi, will not have her name on a ballot paper. Her continuing detention, combined with electoral laws that appear to have been deliberately written to exclude her, has meant that she cannot take part in the election. In response, her party, the National League for Democracy, has chosen to boycott the poll.
Like Aung San Suu Kyi, Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein knows the price of a life in politics in Myanmar. She grew up in the heady days after the second world war and watched as her father reached the post of deputy prime minister during the country’s fractious early days of self-governance.
However, after the military seized control of the country her family was targeted. In 1990 she followed her father, mother and two brothers into jail for her opposition to the ruling military. She spent seven years in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison.
Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein says getting people to the ballot box in a country where political opposition is violently crushed is the priority for the 31 opposition and ethnic minority parties that have so far registered for the election.
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