Q: How is your campaign going, and how many seats does the FUP expect to win?

A: We’re running in seventeen townships. We’re just introducing our FUP to respective regional areas. We are running in one township in Mandalay, Magway, Bago, Irrawaddy regions and seven townships in the Rangoon Region. Originally we decided to run in 34 townships during our conference, but have to balance the budget that has been provided by our mother parties. Also, we have to review the situation of candidates when we interview them. So, in the end, we can only run in 17 townships.

Q: Ethnic people are leading the FUP. As the party is mainly running in the mainland, how much trust have you received from the Bamar people living in the mainland? How much support do they give to the leadership of the ethnic people?

A: This is a good question; honestly we have become suspicious of parties from the mainland. Our country believes ethnic people from the states are more honest compared to mainland ethnic Bamar on a national scale. We’re not saying the people from the mainland aren’t honest, but this is a commonly held belief. Just like this, we behave modestly and keep high ambitions. As we do our work honestly, ethnic Bamar have started to accept that we can bring benefits to the entire country even though our party is led by ethnic people.

Q: As an ethnic leader, do you have confidence in administering the entire country?

A: For generations our area has been ruled by autocracy starting thousands of years ago. So, we have all these customs. We have the qualifications to administer the entire country and there are many of us; not only those from the mainland can lead the country. Many people from our state are fully capable of this. There are also political leaders, legal experts and those with military experience. We have people with military vision able to come up with (effective) strategies.

Q: What else do you want to add?

A: The FUP must be able to form a government in 2020. We must get the presidential position. Our principles state that we must be able to form a government to administer the entire country. We have already set our strategy.

As a party born from the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation [an alliance of 22 political parties] we will take our foothold in the mainland. Starting from 2016, we will fill in all the areas that our mother parties haven’t. We will work hard using all our strength so that there won’t be any place left. Our mother parties must win seats in seven states in the 2020 Election.

We’ve drafted our strategies to overtake the large parties and become powerful in the mainland and don’t think any party, or force, can compete with our NBF party--if we combine our FUP from the mainland and mother parties in the states.

In the next five years, we will work with our ethnic brotherhood parties, the brotherhood parties from the mainland and Burma (Myanmar) Armed Forces to become a federal union that is free, fair and with equality.

Translated by Thida Linn
Edited by BNI staff