Two weeks ago, Aung San Suu Kyi, the sixty-eight-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Burmese politician, and icon of democracy, sat down before a microphone at a press conference in Singapore. Clad in a pink-and-purple jacket, her upswept hair adorned with a red flower, Suu Kyi had come to the end of her first-ever visit to the city-state known for its great wealth and strict laws.
Once one of the world’s most famous political prisoners, Suu Kyi was detained for a total of fifteen years before she was released, in 2010, and became not merely a revered opposition leader but an elected official. In Burma’s historic elections last year, after the nation’s military leaders began a series of political and economic reforms, Suu Kyi won a parliamentary seat. During her four-day trip to Singapore, home to more than five million people, Suu Kyi met the country’s prime minister, delivered speeches to business and political leaders, spoke to several thousand Burmese, and even attended a Formula 1 Grand Prix race.
It’s hard to imagine many Asian destinations that are more different from her homeland. While Transparency International rates Burma’s public sector the world’s fifth most corrupt, Singapore’s is the fifth least corrupt. Singapore has also become a stunning economic success: it has the world’s seventh-highest per-capita gross domestic product, more than sixty-one thousand dollars. Burma’s fourteen hundred dollars per capita, meanwhile, puts it at two hundred and fourth. And then there’s Singapore’s stellar education system, which last year was rated the world’s fifth best. The list included the top forty nations, and Burma didn’t make the cut; in 2011, the government spent just .8 per cent of its gross domestic product on education, the world’s second lowest, after Equatorial Guinea, based on countries’ most recent available information. Singapore’s medical system is also top notch: in 2000, the U.N. said that it was the world’s sixth best, while Burma’s came in at a hundred and ninth.
Before departing Singapore, Suu Kyi was asked which of the city-state’s policies or institutions Burma could emulate. She mentioned Singapore’s successful education system, but she stressed that it was “workforce oriented,” and her subsequent musings suggested something else, too: that she feels Singaporeans are materialistic.
“I want to learn a lot from the standards that Singapore has been able to achieve, but I wonder whether we don’t—I don’t—want something more for our country,” she said. “What is the purpose of the workforce? What is the purpose of work? What is the purpose of material wealth? Is that the ultimate aim of human beings? Is that what we all want?” She continued, “I want to probe more into the successes of Singapore and to find out what we can achieve beyond that.”
It was a remarkable statement. The populist leader of one of the world’s most impoverished nations looked around at Singapore’s fantastic wealth and seemed, well, not that thrilled with it all. Given Singapore’s economic indicators, shouldn’t Suu Kyi have encouraged her country toward just the kind of development that Singapore has embraced?
Rather than turn defensive, several commentators in Singapore agreed with Suu Kyi, acknowledging their country’s competitive, stress-inducing environment and encouraging their fellow-citizens to do some soul-searching. One blogger wrote that Suu Kyi was right: Singaporean leaders had built a house, but not a home, for their citizens. Some Burmese people, meanwhile, pointed out that they could do without Singapore’s political repression and censorship, though the country’s city-planning methods and financial systems could serve as useful models.
Ernest Bower, the chair for Southeast Asia studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, D.C., told me that Suu Kyi is, in fact, “a person who thinks about jobs and what they mean for Burmese people.” She sincerely cares about what economic changes mean for everyday life, he said.
When it comes to Suu Kyi’s views on Singapore, it’s crucial to remember that the city-state long maintained diplomatic ties with the very regime that kept her locked up. Burma’s military leaders even reportedly stashed billions of dollars in Singapore over the years. There’s “latent resentment for the role Singapore played as an enabler for the junta” among many Burmese, Bower said. (Suu Kyi declined to comment for this piece. When asked if she was available for a telephone interview, her assistant responded, “I am sorry to inform you that she does not chat on the phone.”)
There is another important historical component to consider. “A lot of people forget: she grew up a time when Burma was the most promising country in Southeast Asia; they had the region’s best universities and hospitals,” Bower said. Suu Kyi doesn’t view her country as a defeated, destitute nation; rather, she thinks that it has suffered for several decades but will rise again. Suu Kyi, then, might have looked around at Singapore and thought, This should have been us.
Of course, material comforts alone do not guarantee personal well being, which Suu Kyi seemed to be trying to articulate. Last month, the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network issued the World Happiness Report 2013. It found that, in addition to income, key factors in promoting happiness include life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, and social support networks. Suu Kyi might point out that, indeed, this was one area where Singapore didn’t dominate the rankings, landing in thirtieth place. (Burma, however, was a hundred and twenty-first.)
Perhaps Suu Kyi’s views on economic development will change in the months and years ahead; she has said she wants to run for President in 2015. As she continues speaking with constituents in her new role as a politician, she may find that the country’s overwhelmingly poor voters might welcome some Singapore-style economic policies—even if they lead to materialism.
Read Evan Osnos on Burma’s shift toward democracy.
Photograph: Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty
