When a saint loses her halo, you hear a tinkle as it drops to the ground. In the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, one hears a crash.
One
always doubted her ability to handle the democratic transition. For
democracy is a violent form of government: witness the two World Wars.
The Forum Polity has since antiquity been associated with violence.
In Bangladesh, democracy unleashed untold violence; now that democracy is dead, peace has returned.
But
what explains The Saint? Western civilization has a hankering after
saints. At the Vatican, an entire bureaucracy is devoted to unearthing
saints. No other civilization has this craving for saints. Mahatma
Gandhi squats uniquely on the cusp of two civilizations.