Politics & Power Quote by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

“Once serious political dialogue has begun” sounds like a modest procedural benchmark. It’s actually a trapdoor demand, calibrated for a regime that preferred pageantry to negotiation. Aung San Suu Kyi isn’t praising conversation for conversation’s sake; she’s drawing a hard line between managed reform and the one thing authoritarian systems reliably fear: accountable talk where power has to justify itself.

The phrasing is deliberately conditional. Progress isn’t measured by elections-as-theater, ministerial reshuffles, or photo-op “openings” to the world. It’s measured by whether the state is willing to enter a forum where opposition voices aren’t decorative and outcomes aren’t pre-scripted. “Serious” does the heavy lifting: it implies recognition of legitimate counterparts, the release of political pressure points (prisoners, censorship, intimidation), and an agenda with teeth. Dialogue becomes a proxy for the broader ecology of democratic life: free association, trust in institutions, and the possibility of losing power without annihilation.

Then she turns outward. “The international community can assume” is both invitation and warning: don’t validate cosmetic change; don’t reward the junta for symbolic gestures; don’t let geopolitics masquerade as moral clarity. This line comes from an activist who understood how external legitimacy functions as oxygen for domestic control. By setting a simple, observable threshold, she gives diplomats a test they can’t easily spin and citizens a standard that can’t easily be confiscated.