Nobel Peace Prize laureate, affectionately called The Lady, Aung San Suu Kyi has been re-elected as chair of Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) at a landmark party conference.
Human Rights leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has held her position as a key global leader in the arena of human rights and peaceful resistance, is also holding her national leadership post in Myanmar, despite the NLD party undergoing an overhaul to adjust to the new democratic framework of the country formerly called Burma.
(See: World rejoices TI Aung San Suu Kyi freedom)
The beloved leader called for a “good relationship” with the powerful military and vowed to infuse new blood into the NLD party, that is still recovering from more than two decades of persecution under military rule.
On the last day of a landmark three-day party congress, attended by 894 delegates from around the country, the Nobel laureate was named chairwoman of NLD's new executive board.
Aung San Suu Kyi's dominant influence has attracted criticism that the NLD might be too reliant on her charisma and is too authoritarian.
She urged critics to not vote for her if they thought that.
"All our leaders have been elected democratically," Aung San Suu Kyi said. "So if they feel that they do not like authoritarian leadership, they should not vote for those whom they think are authoritarian."
The NDL formed as the army crushed a mass pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Aung San Suue Kyi vowed to include those most oppressed in decision making. She stood against on the world's most violently oppressive regimes, using what she taught to be the most effective tool: non-violnce.
The NDL party won a 1990 general election, nullified by the then-ruling military.
NLD boycotted a 2010 general election. After a military-backed elected government took office in 2011 and instituted democratic reforms, the NLD contested byelections in 2012, winning 43 of 44 seats and putting Aung San Suu Kyi into parliament.
"Emerging from repression that limited its actions – not least because Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior party members spent years under detention – the NLD leader vowed in her opening speech on Saturday to inject the party with "new blood" and decentralise decision-making processes," the Guardian reports.
The Lady is the title of an extraordinary new film that chronicles Aung San Suu Kyi's lifelong achievement of winning hearts and minds toward democracy, without violence, regardless of life threatening rulers.
It is the story of the pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and her late husband, the academic and writer Michael Aris.
The Lady is "a true story of love set against political turmoil."
(Watch The Lady trailer on this page at the left.)
The film about the woman also called "The Iron Orchid" demonstrates that peace comes without weapons, not with them.
The Lady is a French-English co-production directed by Luc Besson, starring Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her late husband.
Suu Kyi was the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner. That might change if Pfc. Bradley Manning becomes a recipient of the award, as pro-human rights leaders across the world hope.
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