Arakan League for Democracy

Arakan League for Democracy ရခိုင် ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်
Abbreviation	ALD
Leader	Aye Tha Aung
Founded	27 September 1989 8 January 2017 (split from ANP)
Split from	Arakan National Party (2017)
Headquarters	373 Lower Pazundaung Road, Pazundaung Township, Yangon
Ideology	Rakhine interests
Seats in the Amyotha Hluttaw	1 / 224
Seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw	0 / 440
Seats in the Rakhine State Hluttaw	4 / 47
Party flag
Website
www.aldarakan.org
Politics of Myanmar Political parties Elections

The Arakan League for Democracy (Burmese: ရခိုင်ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်; abbreviated ALD) is a political party active in Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma).

The ALD was founded on 27 September 1989, in Yangon, and it was registered with the election commission on 2 October 1989. It contested 25 seats in the 1990 general elections,^[1] receiving the majority of the vote at the Rakhine State.^[2] Nationally it received 1.2% of the vote, winning 11 seats, making it the third-largest party.^[3] However, the ALD was banned by the military government on 6 March 1992.^[4]

On 6 April 2012, the ALD was allowed to be re-established as a political party by the Union Election Commission, as its application complied with the law and rules of the election commission.^[5] In November, members of the ALD claimed that they had been threatened by local authorities with the abolition of the party, due to an alleged recruitment membership fraud.^[2]

On 17 June 2013, The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and the Arakan League for Democracy signed an agreement to merge under the name Arakan National Party (ANP).^[6] With the formation of the new party, the Arakan League for Democracy was officially dissolved on 6 March 2014.^{[7][8][9][10]}

On 8 January 2017, former leaders of the ALD announced 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.^[11][12] As of 5 October 2017, five members of parliament — four state Hluttaw members and one Amyotha Hluttaw member — have resigned from the Arakan National Party and joined the re-registered Arakan League for Democracy.^[13]