The Winning Shan Party is 11 today

The Winning Shan Party is 11 today

Back To The Past-Today 
18 October 1988 

The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the party later to win the most seats in the Shan State and emerge as second only to the NLD in the whole of Burma, is 11 years old today, according to SNLD source. 
Following announcements made by the State Law and Order Council that took power in a bloody coup exactly one month earlier to hold multiparty general elections, the SNLD was one of the nearly 200 political parties that were set up. 

The founding meeting was held in Rangoon. Sai Thet Win was elected as the party's first president. But he retired within a year and Khun Htoon Oo, a scion of the Hsipaw House, became its president, the office that he still holds today. 

The party applied for registration to the Multi-Party Elections Commission on 21 October. Three days later, it became the country's 45th party to be officially recognized. 

The party participated actively in the National Convention, the junta held assembly to draft the 'permanent Union constitution'. It remains today, after the NLD's boycotting, the main opposition to the junta's draft charter proposal. 
The party's main principle is that democracy and the right of self determination must come together. "Both are head and tail of the same coin", read a joint-declaration with the Union Nationalities League for Democracy, a united front of the non-Burman groups. 

Nine years after its election victory, the government-elect party of Shan State, like the NLD, is facing the question put forward by the junta and the junta-influenced elements: Could the 1990 elections results be still considered valid? 

Already there are talks of holding new elections. 

However, the party's supporters, among whom are the two ceasefire groups, the Shan State Army North and the Shan State National Army, appear to be still positive about the validity of the 1990 results. 

"It is plain ignorance of democratic procedures", said one, referring to talks of holding new elections. "To hold new elections in a democracy, one has to dissolve the Parliament first. And in order to dissolve it, one has to convene it in the first place. However, in Burma, Parliament has not been convened even once yet since 1990".