The Arakan National Party (ANP) will hold its first conference this September in Thandwe, a town in southern Arakan State. The time and place of the meeting was recently decided by party leaders at a two-day meeting held from in Rangoon.
U Aye Tha Aung, a senior ANP leader, told members of the press that the five-day inaugural ANP conference will start on September 25th.
“The conference is very important for our party because it will be the first time we’re meeting after the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) and the Rakhine National Development Party (RNDP) merged,” he added.
The ALD won 11 parliamentary seats in the 1990 general elections, while the RNDP won 34 parliamentary seats in Burma’s 2010 general elections. The two parties decided to merge in response to proposals put forward by Arakanese people.
Since March 2014, leaders from both parties have been trying hard to organize an inaugural ANP conference. ANP central committee members—including the party’s president, vice-president, and general secretary—are expected to be elected at the conference.
The conference is also designed to develop criteria for representatives who want to participate in the upcoming 2015 general election.
Although Thandwe Town has been chosen as the venue for the conference, U Aye Tha Aung said that if necessary the location “may be shifted to Taungup, which is also located in southern Arakan State.”
The decision to hold the conference in a Southern Arakan town was made after Arakan-based political analysts said that the ANP will probably win some parliamentary seats in southern Arakan constituencies in the forthcoming 2015 general election.
