After winning elections in November, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy will take over parliament on February 1. Roughly a month afterwards, it will nominate and vote in a president.
The process will complete the remarkable journey Suu Kyi has made from global dissident under house arrest to powerful politician with an overwhelming mandate from voters to dictate the future of Myanmar.
But it will also turn her into a subject more inviting of scrutiny and satire then blank check praise and adoration.
Myanmar’s cartoonists are already thinking about the question that arises from her transition to power: Is it okay to make fun of “The Lady”?
After skewering the powers that be for 100 years and indirectly supporting the NLD through their depictions of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, the country’s storied cartoonists are in an awkward position.
The issue was first posed in an AFP story this week:
“Suu Kyi is lionised in Myanmar, where the peaceful resistance to army rule was for years depicted as a tussle between the frail and graceful Nobel laureate and brutish generals,” wrote AFP’s Kelly Macnamara and Phyo Hein Kyaw.
They go on to quote legendary cartoonist Maung Maung Aung, who said illustrators should not shirk from satirizing Suu Kyi’s administration.
“Cartoonists should not be biased, they should point out the faults of any government,” he told AFP.
Not all cartoonists feel the same way.
Phoe Kyaw, from Suu Kyi’s Kawhmu constituency, told AFP he is sort of split on the issue.
“She will understand,” he said, referring to satirical criticism of Suu Kyi. “On the other hand, I believe in her as our national leader, that’s why I won’t draw a cartoon to insult her personally.”
The problem isn’t a theoretical one, as 48-year-old Maung Maung Fountain – the pen name for cartoonist S Tha Htoo – recently learned.
Maung Maung Fountain told the Irrawaddy on Monday that he believes his Facebook account has been made inaccessible after he posted a cartoon showing a woman wearing a red dress and a crown. In the drawing, two young boys are talking to her.
“You said what you wanted to do, but you got angry when we said what we wanted to do,” the boys say, according to the Irrawaddy’s translation.
It appears to be a commentary on Suu Kyi’s heavyhanded management style, which has come in for criticism in the past.
Though she is not named, the red dress and the crown – red is the NLD color and the crown, well, you get the point – led many to believe he was satirizing Suu Kyi.
The reluctance to make fun of Suu Kyi is understandable. She spent a combined 15 years under house arrest in the name of democracy and freedom and made countless personal sacrifices along the way.
Indeed, many cartoonists and journalists have more freedom to write and say what they want because of Suu Kyi’s persistent stance against the generals.
But power changes the status quo.
Soon Suu Kyi will be responsible for leading the peace process and addressing a number of longstanding problems plaguing the country after nearly 50 decades of military rule and a few years of semi-civilian governance.
Cartoonists will have to find new ways of doing what they do best: using their pens to call out the failings of the government and its leaders, whoever they are.
Asked if his peers would take up Suu Kyi as a subject of satire, Maung Maung Fountain told Coconuts Yangon in a phone interview on Wednesday that cartoonists in Myanmar are not influenced “by any political agenda or parties.”
“So we will write cartoons and our cartoons will be exhibited,” he added. “There are satirical cartoons in developed countries or countries which have worse situations than us, so we will be writing.”
