Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi attends her election campaign in Myeik township, Tanintharyi division, the southern most part of Myanmar, Sunday, March. 25, 2012. Suu Kyi has fallen ill while campaigning for Myanmar's upcoming by-elections and has suspended her extensive tour of the country a week ahead of the polls, her party said Sunday. AP PHOTO/KHIN MAUNG WIN
YANGON—Ill health has forced Aung San Suu Kyi to abruptly cancel further campaign travel, her party said Sunday, just a week before Myanmar by-elections that are seen as a key test of regime reforms.
The Nobel laureate opposition leader, who is running for a seat in parliament in the April 1 polls, was put on a drip and ordered to rest by her doctor after falling ill in the town of Myeik in Myanmar’s far south.
Looking tired and drawn, Suu Kyi arrived at Yangon airport after cutting short her visit, saying only that she was “not well.”
Her doctor, Tin Myo Win, told AFP that Suu Kyi was getting better, but that he had asked that she cancel a final campaign trip on Tuesday and Wednesday to Magway, the central Myanmar region where her independence hero father was born.
“She is recovering, but she needs to rest for at least a week,” he said.
An increasingly frail-looking Suu Kyi has been briefly taken ill once before during her gruelling schedule of rallies and speeches across the country.
The health of the opposition leader, whose family history and long years of detention have made her a symbol for the democratic aspirations of Myanmar’s people, is likely to be a source of anxiety for the tens of thousands of supporters who have thronged to see her at almost every stage of the campaign.
Tin Myo Win said Suu Kyi had become exhausted and suffered vomiting and low blood pressure on Saturday after the boat she was traveling in got stuck on a sandbank for several hours during her trip in the south.
She pressed ahead with a final rally in Myeik on Sunday and was cheered by tens of thousands as she urged supporters to vote for her National League for Democracy party, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
“I’m trying to keep in good health,” she told the crowd, apologizing for making only a brief speech before rushing to catch a flight back to Yangon.
“I have been encouraged by the people,” she said.
A statement from the NLD confirmed the decision to cancel this week’s Magway trip.
The polls next week are the first time Suu Kyi, whose Kawhmu constituency is near Yangon, has been able to stand for election in a country dominated by the military for decades.
The NLD won a landslide victory in an election in 1990 while she was under house arrest, but the ruling junta never recognized the result and she spent much of the next two decades in detention.
The next election in 2010 swept the army’s political allies to power but was marred by widespread complaints of cheating and by the absence of Suu Kyi, who was again under house arrest. She was released a few days after the vote.
A new nominally civilian regime has since implemented sweeping changes, including welcoming Suu Kyi’s party back into mainstream politics and releasing hundreds of political prisoners.
The NLD cannot threaten the ruling party’s majority even with a strong result in the April 1 vote.
But experts believe the regime wants Suu Kyi to win a place in parliament to give its reform drive legitimacy and encourage the West to ease sanctions.
On Wednesday, Myanmar said it had invited US, European and other observers for the vote.
President Thein Sein also vowed to ensure the by-elections were “transparent” in talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, according to a Cambodian government spokesman.
The NLD has made several complaints about what it described as “unfair treatment” by the authorities.