“I myself applied for registration to the managing director of the Union Election Commission. Our party serial number is 61,” said NaiSoeMyint, a central executive committee member of the MDP.

“In keeping with the suggestion made by the Mon monks, we named our party the Mon Democratic Party.”

The party is called the “Mon Party for Democracy” in Mon language and the “Mon Democratic Party” in English.

The MNDF is one of the parties that contested in the 1990 election, but its legitimacy was revoked in March 1992. Now, it is pursuing a return to legality.

“We didn’t contest in the 2010 election because we believed the 2008 constitution was impossible to amend. We didn’t register our party then either. Now, it is claimed that amendments arelegally allowed for the benefit of the country. Even the President spoke out in favor of constitutional amendment rights bya majority, so we decided to register [the party] like other brotherhood partieswho are in the same boat,” said Nai NgweThein, chairman of the MDP.

The brotherhood parties – the Shan National League for Democracy (SNLD), the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) and the Zomi National Congress (ZNC) – also registered with the government in recent months.

The newly registered Mon Democratic Party has 54 central committee members and 21 central executive committee members, although the exact number of total party members has not been confirmed.

The MNDF was reorganized in November 2011, and reinforced with remaining former central committee members and retired officials from the New Mon State Party (NMSP).

Currently, there are three prominent Mon ethnic parties – the armed NMSP, the All Mon Regions Democracy Party (AMDP), which contested the 2010 election, and the MDP.

It was recently determined that the deadline for the unification of the AMDP and the MDP (formerly MNDF) will be December 2014.