Naw Dway Eh Ku
With the purpose of sharing information to public, this will describe the update information related to the fielding political parties and candidates from Kayah State since the 2020 Election have been announced officially to hold in November by the Union Election Commission (UEC) officials.
This discusses as sharing information for public about the candidates of Kayan National Party (KNP) who will compete both in Kayah State and neighbor states.
Since the KNP will compete for votes at Kayah (Karenni) State including Shan, Karen, and Nay Pyi Daw in November 2020 General Election, they are finalizing the final candidate selection by June.
As KNP have formed an alliance and negotiated to not have same polling place with Kayah State Democratic Party (KSDP) in Kayah State, they would compete at only (4) polling places in Kayah State.
In the three compositions of Pyithu Hluttaw (House of Representatives), Amyotha Hluttaw (House of Nationalities), and State Hluttaw, totally with 34 representatives, KSDP will compete in 30 constituencies, and KNP will compete in only 4 constituencies.
They have totally 12 polling places for 2020 General Election, which they have 4 polling places in Kayah State, and the other places are Pe’ Kon Township in Shan State, Lake Tho region in Thun Taunggyi Township, Kayan State, and Nay Pyi Daw – Pyin Mana.
They have plan to compete at the constituencies of Mese and Deemawso Townships in Kayah State.
KNP had competed once in 2020 General Election and once in 2015 Election.
They have prepared selecting the candidates since 2017 with the such criteria – the person who has ability to talk in term of law and political issues, the person who serve for public politically, and the person who are interested in the affair of Kayan nationalities and serve resolutely with no bias and no extremism.
Among the current (11) candidates, there are 4 women included, and there will be 5 women in case the candidates increase to (12) persons. Thus, it said their candidate preparation has 30% women participation.
KNP prioritizes the youth and women mainly, and the current youngest candidate is aged 27-28. Besides, most of the candidates are aged 30-40, middle age, and there are only 2 candidates aged around 50.
The party’s Chairperson, Khoon Bi Htoo, said they prioritized to the youth as 21st Century political mechanism development is more applicable to middle-age people.
The KNP has been founded for 10 years, and currently there are 15 central committee members left out of 17 members since two members were retired. There are totally five thousand applicants applying for party member, and there are also many people supporting the party.
The Chairperson of KNP, Khoon Bi Htoo, said as below about their procedure how they will mainly focus on if the local ethnic parties win the seats in 2020 General Election.
“Hluttaw has responsibility to protect the public from the issues of, for instance, land confiscation or the current popular vacant land issue. And we can help adjudging in government’s budget utilities. The current problem is that the government is utilizing the budget whatever they want, and no one has the rights to inquire whether it achieves with development goal. Besides, there are so many other cases to doubt like the tinder issue. In fact, all of these need to be achieved in right way. This is our number-one mission. When you become a member of parliament, you need to respect the citizens, and consider of their community affairs, crop marketing and high yield including our youth generation. Although we can effort to attend school, but we do not pass the matriculation exam and become unemployed. The party will struggle in every sector of these. Our two parties particularly prioritized to work on it. This is our prioritizing procedure if our party win the seat. On the other hand, we also have other political missions that reveal the essence of Karenni history, reunification of our territories and Kayan ethnics from Pe’ Kon Township, Thun Taung and Lake Tho. This is also our sustainable goals.
Number three goal is Peace. The peace issues include forming unity among armed organizations, federal union and structure expected by state armed organizations, and the state’s political rights. For example, they have the same concept with us that the state’s electricity resources are the one the state residents should be accessed. As it depends on the political concept, we have plan to stand for it. Likewise, we also have goal to build peace process with best effort. If our party win the seat, we have party goal to hold the peace conference officially in Kayah State and change the citizens’ voice and publics’ voice into political principles, and aid gradually to strive for publics’ will. We have vowed to implement these three main goals after the election.”
The main components for KNP in 2020 General Election are the current winning party- National League for Democracy (NLD) and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
It said the KNP will implement the activity of protecting the ethnic minority rights and promoting public participation through transparent decision if they win in the 2020 General Election.
Khoon Bi Htoo said the fundamental concept of their party is to become the party who stands with the public resolutely, respect public, and also better or stronger than both the past and current governments.