NAYPYITAW, 18 October 2021, (TON): The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), one of Myanmar’s oldest and strongest political parties, was notably absent on October 9 when the country’s coup regime made a bid to restart a peace process that has been put on hold since it seized power in February.

As one of 40 parties invited to a meeting organized by the junta’s National Solidarity and Peace Negotiation Committee, the SNLD opted along with 22 others not to attend.

A day after the meeting, however, the party’s general secretary, Sai Leik, sat down with media to discuss the peace process and a number of other subjects related to the regime’s efforts to reshape Myanmar’s politics.

Sai Leik said that they did invite us. However, it was not as part of the “peace process executive team,” but under the “political parties” category. We held an internal party meeting and came to the decision that we weren’t ready to attend.

He also said that as I’ve said before, the country is in a very unstable state these days. This isn’t the time [to restart] the peace process.

This meeting organized by the military council was not as inclusive as previous peace talks. In my opinion, it is very unlikely they will be able to come up with a viable plan to achieve “peace” with everything that is going on right now.