At the Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting of the ANP held in Sittwe on 2nd and 3rd January it was decided to temporarily leave the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation (NBF) and the United Nationalities Alliance (UNA), according U Khaing Pyi Soe the vice chairman and spokesperson for the ANP.

He said: “We decided to temporarily cease our relationship with the NBF and the NUA. Although we were supposed to decide on the matter of alliances at this CEC meeting we could not because the secretary U Thar Tun Hla and U Hla Saw, both of whom are responsible for deciding alliance policies, were unable to attend the meeting. That is why we temporarily broke off all relations.”

The party will hold a central committee meeting in the last week of March where they will discuss what relationship they should have with the ethnic alliance groups.

The ANP was formed from a merger between the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD), which won some seats in the 1990 election and the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), which won some seats in 2010 election.

Prior to the merger the ALD was a member of the UNA and the RNDP was a member of the NBF.

After they merged to form the ANP there were disagreements on party policy towards alliances.

Unity within the party is more important than alliances with different groups, so the ANP have ceased all relations with alliance groups said U Ba Shin, a member of the Kyaukphyu Township Parliament who is also an ANP CEC member.

There are 39 members of the ANP CEC, but only 22 attended the last meeting.

Some of the top leaders who did not attend the meeting included: U Aye Thar Aung, U U Hla Saw, U Thar Tun Hla, U Hla Myint and U Myo Kyaw.

Narinjara News tried to contact them on several occasions, but their mobile phones were never switched on.

Translated by Aung Myat Soe English version written by Mark Inkey for BNI