YANGON – Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is recovering after she fell ill on the campaign trail, but must rest this week ahead of weekend by-elections, her party said Monday.
The Nobel laureate, who is running for a seat in parliament for the first time in the Sunday polls, cut short a trip to the south and cancelled campaigning this week after she felt sick Saturday and was put on a drip.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) said in a statement that the pro-democracy icon had become tired after spending many hours under the sun in a small boat on the latest in a series of gruelling campaign tours.
“Although her health condition is improving, her family doctor advised that she needs to take a rest for four or five days,” it said.
Her doctor, Tin Myo Win, told AFP that Suu Kyi had become exhausted and suffered vomiting and low blood pressure after the boat she was travelling in got stuck on a sandbank for several hours on Saturday.
She pressed ahead with a final rally in Myeik on Sunday and was cheered by tens of thousands of supporters.
An increasingly frail-looking Suu Kyi had been briefly taken ill once before during her busy schedule of rallies and speeches across the country.
The NLD won a landslide victory in an election in 1990 while Suu Kyi 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 in detention and released a few days afterwards.
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.