Only 4 out of 100 Mon candidates standing for election won seats in the 8 November general election.
Three Mon parties had candidates running, they were: the Mon National Party (MNP), the All Mon Regions Democracy Party (AMDP) and the Women’s Party (Mon). Some Mon candidates had also ran as independent candidates after they split from their parties.
The problem was that the candidates from the two major Mon parties, the MNP and the AMDP, received insufficient votes to win because they split the Mon vote.
Mon monks, activists and Mon people, who wanted the two parties to merge had worked hard mediating between the two parties to try and unify them into one party. They believed that the parties would not win seats if they competed against each other. Unfortunately the parties were unable to come to an agreement and the activists worst fears were realised.
This allowed the National League for Democracy (NLD), who won the elections by a landslide, and the incumbent Union Solidarity Party (USDP) to win more seats in Mon State at the expense of the MNP and AMDP.
In the 1990 elections, 5 out of 19 Mon candidates won seats competing against the NLD. In the 2010 elections, 16 Mon out of 35 Mon candidates won seats competing against the USDP.
In comparison to those previous elections the Mon parties were wiped out in 2015.
If the Mon parties do not merge and fight the next elections in five years time as one party IMNA predicts there will be even less chances of Mon candidates winning parliamentary seats.
Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
