Aung San Suu Kyi may not be president, but she has so many other positions it is starting to be difficult to keep track of them all.
The International Crisis Group points out in a new report that the 71-year-old Nobel laureate and National League for Democracy leader is… drumroll please… state counselor, foreign minister, minister for the president’s office, and is personally leading the peace process and a committee in charge of settling religious tensions in Rakhine State.
“Her twin roles as state counsellor – de facto head of state – and foreign minister, in addition to several thematic committees that she chairs, amount to an enormous workload,” the ICG said in the July 29 report titled “Myanmar’s New Government: Finding its Feet?”
It adds that “Suu Kyi herself continues to perform many of the more high-profile functions… including attending the Association of South East Asian Nations meeting of foreign ministers and dialogue partners in July.”
Indeed, she seems to be busier than the president, Htin Kyaw, whom she put forward earlier this year as the military-drafted constitution bars her from holding the job because her children are foreign nationals.
The implication of the workload argument is twofold.
For one, it could pose actual health risks taking on so many tasks, many of which require a lot of domestic and international travel.
The bigger implication is that, with her attention drifting in so many directions, can Suu Kyi be expected to do all these jobs well?
There’s only so much time in the course of a day, after all.
Read the rest of the report for a fuller picture of Myanmar’s new government four months since it took power after winning elections in November, ending about five decades of military rule.
