People love historical analogies, so it's easy to think of Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest Nov. 13 as Burma's "Mandela moment." When Nelson Mandela was freed from 27 years of imprisonment in 1990, it marked the start of a process that saw the negotiated end of the apartheid regime and genuinely free elections in only four years. Maybe that sort of thing will now happen in Burma too.
That would be nice, but it would be unwise to bet the farm on it. "The Lady," as everybody in Burma calls her, has the same combination of saintly forbearance and tough political realism that enabled Nelson Mandela to lead the transition to democracy so successfully in South Africa, but her situation is very different.
Mandela emerged from prison to assume the leadership of a powerful, disciplined mass movement, whereas Suu Kyi must start by picking up the pieces of a party that has split and lost focus during her seven years of house arrest. Its leaders are almost all elderly men, and there is no younger generation of leaders in sight.