Suu Kyi takes campaign break to recover health

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is taking a few days off from campaigning for this weekend's by-elections while she recovers from exhaustion, her party announced Monday.

Suu Kyi is suffering from exhaustion and stress, causing her to abruptly suspend her activities during a weekend campaign trip to Mergui in southern Myanmar, a statement from her National League for Democracy party said.

The 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate is now recovering at her home in Yangon and will take a break of four or five days ahead of Sunday's elections.

The statement said Suu Kyi had been weakened by a rigorous schedule that took her all over the country to campaign for her party's candidates, who are running in 44 constituencies. Suu Kyi herself is running in a constituency south of Yangon.

A spokesman for her party, Han Thar Myint, said Suu Kyi is also suffering from low blood pressure, which caused her to fall ill in early March while campaigning in Mandalay in central Myanmar.

The polls are the first in which Suu Kyi's party is taking part since it won a 1990 general election, only to have the army refuse to let it take power before launching a campaign of repression against the country's pro-democracy movement.

Her party's participation represents a qualified endorsement of the political reforms initiated by Myanmar's current, military-aligned government, which came to power in a 2010 election that the NLD boycotted.

The NLD statement said that a medical checkup in February found that Suu Kyi was in good health. It said exhaustion and stress had been brought on by intense hot weather in Mergui over the weekend, with Suu Kyi having to travel for an extended period in a small boat.

NLD members, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to reporters, said the authorities denied Suu Kyi's party the use of a larger ferry-type vessel that would have allowed her to travel faster, so her group was forced to use three smaller boats, making the journey's duration three times as long.

Han Thar Myint said that Suu Kyi was still very weak and was suffering from an upset stomach, and that she did not even come downstairs from her bedroom to work Monday.

"She is very weak and needs an IV drip," he said. "She is not in critical condition, but is very fragile at the moment and needs to rest."

He added that it was still not certain whether Suu Kyi would be able to make a scheduled stay the night before the elections in Kawhmu, the constituency where she is running.