In the grandest gesture yet of her young administration, Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, opened a peace conference on Wednesday to bring together hundreds of the country's ethnic armed groups in hopes of ending decades of conflict.
More than 750 delegates, many wearing checkered longyi or saffron-coloured attire, attended the opening ceremony. The conference was the first time in seven decades that so many factions -- the government, parliament, the military and political parties, and ethnic armed groups -- had gathered to address the country's armed struggles.
The conference picked up on the previous government's partial success in securing a national ceasefire last year. But despite the gathering's symbolism, expectations for progress were low. No formal negotiations were scheduled to take place during the five-day meeting.
Khin Zaw Oo, a former general who is the secretary to the government's negotiation team, said that "this meeting is only about trust-building" and that it was just the first in a series of regular talks.
By calling the process the "21st Century Panglong", Ms Suu Kyi is invoking the legacy of her father, the independence figure Aung San. In 1947, he hosted a conference of ethnic leaders in the central town of Panglong that helped create modern Myanmar by rallying them around the promise of equality and self-determination.
The optimism of that moment was dashed with Aung San's assassination a few months later and the outbreak of insurgencies soon after independence in 1948.
On the eve of her own Panglong conference, Ms Suu Kyi said, "We are trying for all-inclusiveness -- as much as we can."
But some participants complained of rushed planning, with the lists of speakers finalised late, and said too much attention was focused on Ms Suu Kyi's party. And her decision to appoint her longtime doctor, Tin Myo Win, as the government's main peace negotiator revived concerns that she prizes loyalty over competence in her advisers.
Some said the gathering was not inclusive enough, noting that Ms Suu Kyi had set the date for the conference without consulting important participants. And there were worries she was stretched too thin, with preparations for the Asean summit meeting in Laos next week and an expected trip to the US in September.
Ms Suu Kyi "told us that Myanmar's peace process is coming too late, and it is better to jump into it as fast as possible", said Salai Yaw Aung, a leading member of the All Burma Student Democratic Front, an armed group that has signed the ceasefire deal. "That could be a reason the conference was rushed even though armed groups wanted to delay it until October."
"We don't have any expectations for 21st Century Panglong," said Maj Gen Say Htin, the leader of Shan State Army-North, a group fighting the Myanmar Army in the northeast. "We had to negotiate hard just about who would give speeches. We want peace. But whether that will be successful or not depends on the government's process."
The government of former President Thein Sein, which ushered in democratic changes in 2011, pushed to secure a peace deal before the November elections, which Ms Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won in a landslide.
In the end, only eight ethnic armed groups signed the deal. Others were turned off by the army's insistence that they commit to the cease-fire as a condition for participating later in a broader political dialogue about equal rights and power-sharing.
The armed groups that did not sign the deal represented more than four-fifths of all ethnic combatants in the country, according to Bertil Lintner, the author of several books about Myanmar.
But the peace conference includes groups that were excluded from the ceasefire agreement, representing, in effect, the symbolic beginning of a long-awaited political dialogue about federalism and related constitutional changes.
Serious obstacles remain though, particularly the complexity of the conflicts. Some ethnic armed groups are fighting one another. Others are breaking apart. There are hundreds of militia groups, many once proxies for the military. Armed groups and political groups claiming to represent the same ethnic interests sometimes diverge.
Some groups are driven by long-standing political grievances and others by economics, like the trade of jade or drugs. Smaller minority groups in some ethnic areas fear they could be marginalised if the dominant ethnic groups in those places gain more autonomy from the central government.
So far, the Myanmar armed forces, known as Tatmadaw, have shown signs of supporting Ms Suu Kyi. The commander in chief, Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing, who promptly recognised the NLD's victory, made headlines recently by accompanying Ms Suu Kyi to a commemorative ceremony at a mausoleum honouring her father and other independence heroes.
But just a few days ago, Tatmadaw forces clashed again with several groups in Kachin and Shan states. Soon before the conference began, three ethnic groups were prevented from attending because they would not renounce armed resistance: the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army. All three groups, which are allied, have ties to China and, at Beijing's urging, said they would participate.
"We, the Wa, are very upset that three groups are not included at the conference," said San Malaw, who is in charge of external affairs for the United Wa State Army, the largest ethnic armed group, with some 30,000 troops, and also backed by China.
Ms Suu Kyi's management style has alienated some. Questions have also been raised about her commitment to sharing power democratically. She created the special post of state counsellor for herself.
This year, her party appointed two of its members as chief ministers in Rakhine and Shan states even though candidates from local ethnic parties had won the popular vote in the state elections.
This was allowed by the 2008 constitution, which was drafted by a previous military government -- and which Ms Suu Kyi has otherwise criticised.
"We need a political culture that will complement peace," Saw Mutu Say Po, the chairman of the Karen National Union, one of the ethnic armed groups, said at the peace conference.
"We also need to think about the participation of other stakeholders, such as political parties who lost in the elections and civil society organisations," he said. "We need to listen to others' voices and suggestions."