Arakan News Agency
The Rakhine National Party plans to resume cooperation in this year’s elections with two loose coalitions of other ethnic parties that could improve its chances of winning seats outside its home state.
U Hla Myint, a member of the party’s central executive committee, said a three-day meeting of party leaders that ended on April 4 had decided to revive electoral agreements with the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation (NBF) and United Nationalities Alliance (UNA).
Such electoral alliances are intended to boost the chances of ethnic-based parties winning seats in areas such as Yangon, where there are large concentrations of ethnic minorities competing against the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party and the opposition National League for Democracy.
The RNP was born from a 2013 merger between the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and the Arakan League for Democracy. Its two founding parties had been members, respectively, of the NBF and the UNA, but the merged party decided last year to break with the two alliances.
The RNP controls eight seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw (lower house), six in the Amyotha Hluttaw (upper house) and 18 seats in the Rakhine State Hluttaw, where it is aiming to win a majority in the November elections.
U Hla Myint said there would have to be negotiations with the two alliances as the RNP plans to contest some constituencies in neighbouring Chin State and also run for the positions of ethnic affair ministers for Ayeyarwady and Yangon regions.
U Aye Thar Aung, a senior RNP member, said, “To widen the democratic nature in politics, we decided to break the lock. We are to work again with the two alliances.”
Asked why the RNP had ended the cooperation last year, he replied that the decision was made by the central executive committee without his knowledge.
The RNP’s chances of a strong result in Rakhine have been boosted by the government’s decision to cancel temporary identity papers held mostly by the Muslim Rohingya minority in the state that allowed them to vote in the 2010 elections.
source : Myanmar times
