Lady, Your Halo’s Slipping

Would the world have as much time for Aung San Suu Kyi if she didn’t seem so elegant and poised? It is an uncomfortable question. For much of two decades, the 67-year-old democracy activist endured confinement at the hands of Burma’s ruling generals, refusing a life in exile with her family, lest it compromise her quest for democracy. Her Mandela-like forbearance earned her the sobriquet of the Lady — also the title of the hagiographic 2011 biopic — and with those trademark blossoms in her hair, she came to stand for a gracious, transcendental purity. When Barack Obama visited her at her lakeside home late last year, he looked as giddy as a geek on a date. Flouting Asian etiquette, he planted a kiss on her cheek.

But as Suu Kyi wades into the dirty world of Burmese politics, her image is becoming sullied. It has been a year since her National League for Democracy (NLD) routed the army’s proxy party in parliamentary by-elections. Released from house arrest in late 2010, Suu Kyi is now a legislator and part of a government that appears to be transitioning away from military dictatorship. Yet as the apostle of nonviolence adjusts to the realities of political life, she has managed to alienate ethnic minorities and disappoint international human-rights campaigners. Members of her woefully disorganized NLD are sniping. In mid-March, hundreds of villagers heckled the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her support of a controversial Chinese-linked copper mine to be built on seized land.

(PHOTOS: Aung San Suu Kyi Tours the United States)

Suu Kyi never promised to be her nation’s savior, nor did she ask to become the hallowed dowager of international politics. It was mental toughness, rather than beatific repose, that allowed her to survive her long incarceration — and that may be what is now disappointing her followers. Suu Kyi can radiate charm, but she is also an exacting, intellectual presence. Her posture is erect. She does not allow a participle to dangle. Nor does she pander. “I think we have to deprioritize our emotions and needs when it comes to the greater good,” she lectured the copper-mine protesters, even after Buddhist monks who peacefully marched on their behalf were severely injured by government security forces last year. It was not a line designed to seduce the masses.

The journey from opposition icon to head of state is almost always treacherous. Vaclav Havel, the poet-intellectual, made an ineffectual leader. Lech Walesa, the fiery trade unionist, proved more disastrous. Suu Kyi, of course, is not yet the leader of Myanmar, as Burma is officially known. That figure is President Thein Sein, the mild-mannered retired general who has surprised even detractors with his reformist agenda. It is only with a change to Burma’s constitution that Suu Kyi could be eligible to become President when polls are next held in 2015.

(PHOTOS: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Path to Victory)

Yet most Burmese, and the world community, already treat Suu Kyi as Burma’s chief statesman. Great import is attached to her utterances, and while she is capable of real eloquence, she refuses to moderate her opinions into palatable form. In January, she said she was “very fond” of Burma’s modern military, which her father, independence hero Aung San, founded. Given the army’s stranglehold over Burma for nearly half a century, it seemed a bizarre thing to say.

At other times, Suu Kyi has remained circumspect, even as her followers and the world’s media have yearned for some moral leadership. A fractious land of 135 official ethnic groups, independent Burma has never really known peace. Insurgencies have raged for decades, and ethnic Kachin guerrillas are still battling a Burmese army that has been accused of war crimes and mass rape. Last year, scores of stateless Muslim Rohingyas and a smaller number of Buddhist Arakanese were killed in sectarian violence. Suu Kyi, who is a member of the country’s majority Bamar ethnicity, failed to speak out forcefully against the bloodshed, leading some ethnic-minority leaders to label her a chauvinist.

Suu Kyi’s own party is a mess. Forced into the shadows after the junta ignored its 1990 election victory, the NLD is beset by internal conflict and too dependent on its venerated leader. Even if it is allowed to form a government after the 2015 polls, it can hardly govern itself, much less a nation of some 60 million. The NLD’s heroic stand against military dictatorship may have been its finest moment. And by the same token, the world may come to prefer its founder when she was the mythical lady of the lake rather than the real-life politician she has become.

MORE: Behind the Story: TIME’s Hannah Beech on Burma’s President Thein Sein