By David Hale
The NLD must maintain progress and broaden its focus.
The impending transition of power from President Thein Sein to Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has significant implications for Myanmar’s nascent peace process. Having failed to institutionalize the peacebuilding effort since the process was reinvigorated through a series of bilateral agreements in 2011, there remains an immediate concern that political capital will continue to be the compass and barometer for negotiations. While NLD’s overwhelming majority imbues a mandate to compromise that the USDP lacked, its predisposition towards populist sentiment may yet prove a liability in negotiations. More than anything, Myanmar must begin to broaden the scope of the peacebuilding initiative to lessen its reliance on ever-fragile high-level talks.
Myanmar’s political transition and the military’s escalating offensives in Northern Shan State have added uncertainty amid recent progress in technical negotiations. The October 15 signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement was an important milestone and a critical platform for progressing discussions, albeit with only eight of the 15 armed groups who entered negotiations. From this, the establishment of the trilateral Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) on November 22 and Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee (JCMC) has created a path to negotiate a more substantive agenda. While these have notionally been established as non-partisan bodies, there is little doubt NLD’s sweeping electoral victory will dramatically alter the pace and scope of talks. With so much of the peacebuilding effort to date intrinsically linked directly to the President’s Office, a readjustment and realignment will be inevitable. Technical advisors will be replaced, and new relationships – from the president down – will take time to cement.
Given the length of time inevitably required to transform violent intrastate conflict, Myanmar’s peace processes inevitably must survive further political transitions and military upheavals. In one of his more pessimistic, but perhaps often realistic observations, peacebuilder and scholar John Paul Lederach often observes that getting out of a conflict takes as long as it takes to get into it. So as Myanmar enters its fifth year of negotiations, the road ahead to resolve the country’s six decade civil war, is likely to be long and winding.
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