Day Two. Monday, 23 January 2017

If you’re playing a poker game and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.

Paul Newman (1925-2008)

Today, since every word spoken, except for some, is supposed to be under Chatham House rule—participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers, may be revealed— I’ll be really careful. Heaven help me if I’m not.

Here’s the gist of what is discussed today:

§  On the ALP-ABSDF cases, the three sides (signatory EAOs, Government, and Tatmadaw) agree that the principles of “rule of law” and “independent judiciary” must be respected. And that, at the same time, the principle of national reconciliation adopted by all should not be ignored.

The result is that the Attorney General will be assigned to assist the EAO defendants in the legal process.

§  Both the State Counselor and the military chief urge the signatory EAOs to encourage the non-signatories to sign the NCA. “What do they get by not signing? What do they think they will lose by signing? I have yet to hear their answers for these questions. In fact, if I were they, I would have already signed it.”

(Note: The non-signatory EAOs mentioned to me later that one of the reasons they hadn’t signed was because they had decided to follow The Lady’s reported pre-election advice “not to be so anxious to sign it too soon”)

As for the CinC, he says: “we signed the NCA because we want peace. We don’t consider it as a plaything. It is always there for the EAOs to be signed when they are ready.”

§  Nevertheless, neither one is ready to say Yes or No to the PPST request that hostilities be suspended, so the signatories, as well as the government, could meet and talk to the non-signatories in a more congenial atmosphere.

§  One important question is what the government’s expected outcome from the next UPC 21CP is. We have heard that the State Counselor had organized two workshops in Naypyitaw, on 13-15 December 2016, and 10-11 January 2017. Unconfirmed reports say the government wants a common set of union principles agreed there, from which the basic principles of each state/region can be formulated and negotiated later.

At least out of 8 of the 12 principles worked out at these workshop were said to have been drawn from the NCA.

The CinC again reiterates his stand, “Everything we are going to do must be based on what we have already agreed: The NCA.”

(The following information was supplied by one of the government participants: We are in touch with the UWSA, which is soon to visit Naypyitaw. We are also communicating with the 3 excluded EAOs. As for the UNFC, only Point #1 out of the 9 points proposed by them remains to be further negotiated.)

Meanwhile, a UNFC reader reported that Points#5 and #6 might need clarification. As the NCA’s Article 23 stands, the role of foreign government and international organizations will be jointly decided.

§  We also discuss the issue of the breakdown in communications. During the previous government’s tenure, for example, one government official was assigned to be the liaison between the government and the EAO concerned. That mechanism is no longer available “This was one of the main causes of the several hiccups we are experiencing,” one EAO leader explains. The Tatmadaw again agrees and promises to see that future communications between the EAOs and the Tatmadaw are more efficiently channeled.

Other topics include future implementation of the NCA, for instance, the reinstatement of the Joint Implementation Coordination Meeting (JICM), regarded as the highest organ after the NCA, and the organization of the interim arrangements, as provided by the NCA’s Article 25.

One thing she says lingers on my mind long after the conclusion of the meeting.

“We must have informal meetings, meetings without onlookers, because onlookers have a way of influencing the outcome, sometimes adversely.

“I remember reading George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an elephant’. An elephant was ravaging a bazaar in Moulmen. By the time the police officer (Orwell) arrived, the elephant had calmed down and no longer dangerous. But he had to shoot it dead anyway, because the crowd was urging him to do it and he was afraid he would lose face and be humiliated if he did not. Therefore,” she concludes, “the more we don’t have onlookers, the more fruitful our negotiations will be.”

She does have a point about informal meetings after all. “But I know she doesn’t need to convince the EAOs, both signatories and non, about this,” one EAO leader tells me afterward. “What she needs to convince are her own people.”

My contribution to the said meetings is minimal. I urge the Thatmadaw to hold more meetings such as this quite regularly, not just with the KNU but all the EAOs, particularly the signatories. And that neither should the Tatmadaw nor the NLD government worry whether the EAOs would gang up with one side against the other.

“There’s a Shan saying:

Let not the lotus wither

Nor the water muddy

But catch the fish, as big as you can”

We have a review meeting that evening where we discuss what to do next. But that’ll be another story.