With the general election coming up in 2020, the chance of securing important agreement on key basic federal principles that are currently discussed in the ongoing Union Peace Conference (21st century Panglong) is not promising, as hoped for by State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her ruling party – National League for Democracy (NLD). So long as the government is not proactively providing effective leadership for peace process, and is not aggressive enough in its effort to find ways to negotiate key substantive issues – federal principles – in 2019, it is increasingly unlikely that there will be any meaningful breakthrough before 2020 election.  One thing for sure is that there will not be substantive and different outcome by doing the same thing again and again only with the same team members without a clear understanding of what peace process is all...