Daw Suu appeared calm as she arrived to take her seat as an elected politician for the first time in the capital. "[I will] try my best for the country" (AFP/Soe Than Win).
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar - Burma's opposition leader [the Lady Daw] Aung San Suu Kyi made her historic parliamentary debut Monday [July 9, 2012], marking a new phase in her near quarter century struggle to bring democracy to her army-dominated homeland.
Suu Kyi, whose unswerving campaigning saw her locked up for years by the former junta and earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, appeared calm as she arrived to take her seat as an elected politician in the [relocated] capital Naypyidaw.
"I will try my best for the country," she told AFP as she embarked on her first day of active public office.
Suu Kyi joined fellow members of her National League for Democracy (NLD), as both the party and its charismatic leader transform from [radical] dissident outsiders to [minor] mainstream political players in the wake of [rigged] landmark April by-elections.
The democracy champion's entrance into the legislature comes at an uncertain time for Burma, after recent communal violence and a series of student arrests cast a shadow over promising [whitewash] changes in the former pariah state. More
