Mai Ja Yang Meeting to Be Extended One More Day

[the meeting] tentatively for one more day. There are many lively and forceful deliberations [to be held] as there are many ethnic organisations and political parties attending the meeting so the scheduled timeframe is not enough.”

On the third day of the plenary meeting, the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) and the eight EAOs who signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) submitted their papers on basic principles and policy matters relating to the national defence and security of a future federal union.

Padoh Kwe Htoo Win said that the meeting could not reach agreement on 10-points included in the two papers including keeping a federal defence services under a civilian government so they formed a working group to compile remaining basic principles on the matter.

Chin National Front Vice-Chairman SalaiLian Hmong Sakhong told reporters after the meeting “Today we discussed the security sector and basic principles but they are not yet finished. For tomorrow’s meeting, we have one subcommittee for the framework for political dialogue. In this subcommittee, there are eight NCA signatory EAOs in subcommittee No. 1 and we have already reviewed the framework. We will present our review to the meeting tomorrow and collect the opinions of all the delegates attending. I hope in this way we will have made enough preparations for the forthcoming 21st century Panglong Conference.”

On the second day of the meeting held on July 27, the delegates agreed on a compulsory 8-point basic principles for the constitution of the future federal union namely sovereignty, equality, self-determination, genuine federal union, protection of the rights of ethnic minorities, democratic rights, fundamental rights, gender equity, multi-party democratic rights and a secular state.