AP

YANGON, Myanmar -Myanmar’s military regime opened Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial Wednesday to reporters and diplomats, but the unexpected access did not stem criticism that the hearing is a political ploy to keep the pro-democracy leader behind bars through next year’s election.

She is standing trial with two female members of her party who live with her, and John W. Yettaw, the American who her lawyers said swam to her lakeside home under the cover of darkness earlier this month and sneaked in uninvited.

Diplomats at the hearing said Suu Kyi, dressed in a pink jacket and maroon sarong, appeared alert and in good spirits. She told her lawyer Nyan Win to request permission to talk to them and jokingly said she might be charged under a security law if she addressed them without the court’s consent. She spoke with the diplomats briefly, telling them she hoped to “meet you all in better days.”

“Yes, we saw Aung San Suu Kyi, and she appeared very strong,” Joselito Chad Jacinto, the charge d’affaires of the Philippine Embassy in Myanmar, said after the court hearing. Suu Kyi has reportedly been ill recently.

“She sat listening intently and alertly to what was going on,” he said. “She exuded a type of aura which can be described as moving, quite awe-inspiring.”

But diplomats and her supporters said the limited access didn’t change their opinion of the trial, which many say is staged.

“All the paraphernalia of the courtroom was there, the judges the prosecution, the defense. But I think this is a story where the conclusion is already scripted I’m afraid,” British Ambassador Mark Canning told the British Broadcasting Corp. “No, I don’t have any confidence in the outcome.”

Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party and one of her four lawyers, said allowing diplomats into the trial fell short of demands for an open proceedings. He did not elaborate.