The All Mon Region Democracy Party (AMRDP)’s joint secretary Nai San Tin said the political parties will lodge a joint request with the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) to stage national-level talks.

He added that the AMRDP will meet with the Mon National Party (MNP) at the end of November or early December to discuss organizing such a peace dialogue, and that ideally the Women’s Party (Mon) would also participate.

The New Mon State Party (NMSP), an ethnic armed group from the Mon State, has not signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), the government’s signature peace pact which is also a pre-requisite for holding national level dialogues.

Nai San Tin said that ethnic parties are talking about whether to demand the right to hold the dialogues regardless of whether or not the area armed group has signed the NCA. The political dialogues are intended to be a sort of public temperature taking, where discussions and opinions about the future federal Union and cleavages of ethnic political power are collected for presentation at the Union-level dialogues.

The dialogues, and the right of ethnic people to have a voice in the peace process, should not be contingent on the status of the NCA, or ethnic armed groups’ politicking, he said.

“The NCA signing is concerned with the [ethnic armed groups. But the CSOs [civil society organizations] also have a role to play in the national-level political dialogue,” he said. “Other organizations shouldn’t be prevented from holding a dialogue because of the EAOs.”

The MNP’s general secretary Nai Layih Tamarh said his party will send three delegates to meet with the AMRDP over national-level dialogues and whether the parties should be advocating to hold them.

“If we decide that it should be held, the two parties will have to cooperate and carry it out,” he said. 

The state’s two main political parties are currently engaged in talks over a potential merger which would unify Mon political representation under the umbrella of one lobbying force.