The Arakan National Party ( my, ရခိုင်အမျိုးသားပါတီ;

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

ANP), is a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

(Burma), representing the interests of the

Rakhine people The Rakhine people ( my, ရက္ခိုင်လူမျိုး, : , ), also known as the Arakanese people, are a Southeast Asian ethnic group in Myanmar (Burma) forming the majority along the coastal region of present-day Rakhine Stat ...

Rakhine State Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...

and

Yangon Region Yangon Region(, ; formerly Rangoon Division and Yangon Division) is an administrative region of Myanmar. Located in the heart of Lower Myanmar, the division is bordered by Bago Region to the north and east, the Gulf of Martaban to the south, and ...

. The party was founded on 13 January 2014 and registered with the

Union Election Commission The Union Election Commission ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စု ရွေးကောက်ပွဲ ကော်မရှင်, abbreviated UEC) is the national level electoral commission of Myanmar (Burma), responsible for organising an ...

on 6 March 2014. The chairman of the ANP is Thar Htun Hla. The party is known for its hardline

ethnic nationalist Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentrism , ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocracy, ethnocratic) ...

stance, as well as its

Islamophobic Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism. The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia'' ...

and anti-

Rohingya The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

positions. Some members of the party were involved in instigating violence against Rohingya people during the communal riots in 2012, which left dozens dead and thousands homeless.

History

The

Rakhine Nationalities Development Party The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party ( my, ရခိုင်တိုင်းရင်းသားများတိုးတက်ရေးပါတီ; abbreviated RNDP) was a political party in Myanmar (Burma), representing the inter ...

(RNDP), led by Dr. Aye Maung, and the

Arakan League for Democracy The Arakan League for Democracy ( my, ရခိုင်ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်; abbreviated ALD) is a political party active in Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). History The ALD was founded on 27 September 1 ...

(ALD), led by

Aye Thar Aung Aye Tha Aung ( my, အေးသာအောင် also spelt Aye Thar Aung; born: 10 December 1945) is a Burmese politician, former political prisoner and former Deputy Speaker of the Amyotha Hluttaw, the upper house of the Myanmar parliament. ...

, signed an agreement on 17 June 2013 to merge into a single party under the name "Arakan National Party" after more than eight months of negotiations. In the 2015 general election, the party contested 63 seats in

Chin State Chin State (, ) is a state in western Myanmar. The Chin State is bordered by Sagaing Division and Magway Division to the east, Rakhine State to the south, Bangladesh to the south-west, and the Indian states of Mizoram to the west and Manipur t ...

Ayeyarwady Region Ayeyarwady Region ( my, ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး , , ; formerly Ayeyarwady Division and Irrawaddy Division), is a region of Myanmar, occupying the delta region of the Ayeyarwady River (Irrawaddy River). It is bor ...

, and

. The party won 10 seats in the

Amyotha Hluttaw The Amyotha Hluttaw ( my, အမျိုးသားလွှတ်တော်, ; House of Nationalities) is the ''de jure'' upper house of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the bicameral legislature of Myanmar (Burma). It consists of 224 members, of ...

, 12 in the

Pyithu Hluttaw The Pyithu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်သူ့ လွှတ်တော်, ; House of Representatives) is the ''de jure'' lower house of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the bicameral legislature of Myanmar (Burma). It consists of 440 members, of whic ...

, 22 in the Rakhine State Hluttaw, and one party member became an

Ethnic Affairs Minister An Ethnic Affairs Minister ( my, တိုင်းရင်းသားရေးရာ ဝန်ကြီးများ) is a representative elected by an ethnic minority in a given state or region of Myanmar if that division is composed of an et ...

. Former leaders of the ALD announced on 8 January 2017 that they were splitting from the ANP and were re-registering with the Union Election Commission for the 2020 elections, citing internal issues and RNDP dominance in the ANP as the reasons for the split. On 27 November 2017, Dr. Aye Maung tendered his resignation from the party as chairman and member, citing persistent conflicts within the top ranks of the party.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arakan National Party Political parties in Myanmar Political parties of minorities Far-right politics in Myanmar Buddhist political parties Nationalist parties in Asia 2014 establishments in Myanmar Political parties established in 2014 Right-wing politics in Myanmar Right-wing parties