Learning to share: Time for soul searching
(30 May-2 July 2017)
Everyman
is my superior in some way
In
that I learn from him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Yes,
I have been guilty of reporting almost nothing during the past two months, at
least to my readers, if not to my listeners.
A
lot of self-assessment sessions have been conducted during the time, which,
still ongoing, is expected to be over by early August.
The
following is a brief recap of what I have learned from different sources at
different occasions during the period.
I
have learned from them. And I hope you are going to, too, if you haven’t
already have.
30 June 2017
 |
“National Accord” signing
ceremony
on 29 June 2017 (Photo:BBC)
|
Only two days after my return from Naypyitaw, where I
had missed the “National Accord” signing ceremony on 29 June, which was
yesterday, I’m already under a hailstorm of questions on the Union Peace
Conference 21st Century Panglong (UPC21CP) which wound up on the
same day.
The
outcome is not that I’m just answering their questions as best as I can, but
also hearing comments from my listeners. Here are some of them:
§
I have heard from
a prominent businessman in Rangoon that the Tatmadaw today is just a Thingyan (water
festival) cannon, a lot of noise but with no shells. That’s why the secession
issue has been a recurring nightmare to the generals.
§
I would say that
the “never to secede” clause can be accepted, if they can also accept a counter
demand from us that is proportionate to it. For example, “never to stage a
military coup.”
§
Naypyitaw may say
it was following the Framework for Political Dialogue (FPD) that was adopted by
the Joint Implementation Coordinating Meeting (JICM), the top joint
decision-making body, on 16 December 2015, Paragraph 12, when it came to
signing the 37 points as “part of the Union Accord.” But it was clearly
violating the approved FPD’s Paragraph 6, which calls for 75% ayes upward from
each of the 7 agreed blocs of the UPC21CP for important matters (like security
and federalism) and 50% ayes upward from
each bloc plus 65% ayes together for other issues. Because the 700 UPC 21CP
participants merely became spectators there, not even rubber stamps. Their
right to have a say was blatantly denied there.
9 June 2017
 |
Hkun Okker (Photo:
limacharlienews.com)
|
Today I give a presentation to the students at the
Political Science Department, Chiangmai University. Most of the questions are
answered by Col Hkun Okker, Patron of PaO National Liberation Organization
(PNLO), who had attended both the UPC21CP’s last two day sessions. Here is his
summing-up:
§
On
the positive side, there are 3 noteworthy points:
1.
This was the
first time the participants were doing dialogue, instead of monologues―reading
out papers nobody takes time to comment—as they had twice done last year
2.
The conference
managed to turn out 37points of agreement
3.
As for other
contentious points like “non-secession,” it was decided that they be put aside
for future sessions, instead of opting for the termination of the Nationwide
Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) as some militant participants were hinting
§
On the negative
side, there are also 3 points that are outstanding:
1.
For the military
bloc, it is always a 100% ayes or nays for every issue. For other blocs, it is
not easy even to get 50% ayes
2.
The “non secession”
issue was packaged together with the Right to Self Determination, that includes
the right to have state constitutions, which many consider unfair and
unnecessary
3.
The Tatmadaw is
against allowing the security issue to be discussed at local, state and
regional level, equating security with defense. It insists the issue must be
discussed only at the Union level.
§
1. As for China,
it has been involved in the country’s peace process right from the beginning.
It is against participation by the West. But so far, we have yet to hear it
saying anything against Indian and Thai participation. On the other hand, Naypyitaw’s
rejection of the EAOs’ demand to have foreign mediation has not made things
easier.
2. As far as I know, China has adopted a 3 point
policy for its neighbors: good neighborliness, stability along shared borders,
and economic development
In
the evening, we have an informal dinner meeting with “partners” (according to
Nelson Mandela, who said “When you are making peace with your enemy, your
enemy becomes your partner”) coming from Rangoon. Here are some of the
points made by them:
§
One problem with
the UPC21CP’s last session was: Former negotiators became facilitators and new
negotiators were acting as though they were debaters, instead of being negotiators.
§
Another problem
is we have only formal meetings. Rarely informal ones where both sides can join
hands together to find out how we can overcome the official positions each side
is holding. (One government “partner” retorts that we don’t have sufficient
funds to engage in informal meetings like during the days of the previous
government)
§
Concerning the
informal meeting which is scheduled for tomorrow with the United Nationalities
Federal Council (UNFC)’s Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN), a
“partner” maintains that the Peace Commission (PC) stands by the “agreement in
principle” reached in Rangoon on 3 March, not the text revised by the UNFC/DPN
and presented on 28 April
10 June 2017
 |
PC and DPN
meet in Chiangmai,
10 June 2017. (Photo:Irrawaddy)
|
Today, as the DPN-PC delegated meet downtown, we are
having a pre-meeting for the UPC21CP review meeting to be held at the KNU HQ at
Lewa/Lawkhila, opposite Thailand’s Tha Song Yang district. As I have done in
the past, no names of the participants will be mentioned here, except myself.
§
The EAOs and
ethnic parties were bullied and bulldozed to accept the 37 points
§
The government
did not follow agreed procedure. And you (EAO representatives) agreed to it.
You should be reminded that Yemen, after signing the peace accord, went back to
war because agreed procedures were allowed to be violated. You may get away
this time. But if you keep on pooh-poohing them, blood will be on your hands.
§
Under U Thein
Sein, the peace process was a political issue. Now the Tatmadaw says it’s a
security issue, and the government is following its lead
§
Yes, it was meant
to be a joint process. But the whole thing at present appears to be out of
joint
§
The UPDJC seems
to have taken precedence over the JICM. What was JICM doing during the impasse
(over ‘non-secession’ clause)?
§
Who gave Padoh
Kwe Htoo Win (KNU vice chairman and leader of the Peace Process Working Team)
mandate to sign the 37 point “Union accord”?
§
Many of our
frontline negotiators appear to be suffering from both physical and mental
exhaustion. They are just going through the motions like automatons. We should
not blame them too much. We should instead find replacements or reinforcements
for them.
§
I have looked
into the NCA text again and have not found any paragraph saying the
non-signatories are excluded from the political dialogue process
§
The proposed
points on the 5 dialogue topics should have been distributed long before hand,
not on the day of the opening
§
We EAOs are not
without blame: we didn’t have any plan on who will say what during the
“dialogue” days on 25-26 May. Moreover, we had changed our negotiators only a
few weeks before the UPC21CP. They were not used to negotiating with their
enemies. And there was disconnection between the predecessors and their
successors.
11 June 2017
 |
Suwannsam Jataka (Photo:vachalenxeon.deviantart.com)
|
“How do we do it so that there is a ‘seeing my son
carrying a bowl full of gold’ situation?”
That
is a question posed by a “partner” as he is driven to the airport this morning
to return to Rangoon.
For
outsiders, who are unaware of the Suwannsam Jataka, Burmese version, the story
goes like this.
Suwannasami aka Suwannasam is looking after his blind
parents. Everyday he goes into the jungle to find fruits and vegetables to feed
them. One day, the king who comes hunting sees him, mistakes him for game, and
shoots him with his arrow. As he lies dying, a god appears and offers 3
choices: either their son is cured, their blindness gone, or they receive a
bowl full of gold from him. Their answer is that they want to see their son
coming home carrying a bowl full of gold. Delighted by their wit, their
three-fold wish is granted by the god.
This
“partner” seems to be a hopeless hopeful like me. No matter how big the obstacles,
he doesn’t give up. Indeed he is a person after my own heart.
We
have another pre-meeting afterward. And here are the selected comments:
§
We EAOs are at a
disadvantage when we go to negotiate at Naypyitaw, the government’s homeground.
Especially when they are resorting to intimidation instead to the culture of
negotiations. I’m wondering whether we should propose holding our formal talks
outside the country, like others have been doing.
§
The government
should be more broadminded. If they can’t even treat us signatories right, how
can they hope to persuade the non-signatories?
§
We didn’t have
any problem with the secession issue during U Thein Sein’s days. The reason the
Tatmadaw wanted to propose it might be because it knows right from the start
the EAOs wouldn’t agree. And, in the end, the loser would be the State
Counselor herself, who has yet to win any EAOs over to sign the NCA.
§
The fact that the
ethnic parties won less than adequate seats during the last general elections
also doesn’t work in favor of the federal cause. If we can’t do better in 2020,
things may become tougher (which doesn’t mean that they should aim for majority
seats which is next to impossible anyway, but for swing seats for which the
dominant parties must negotiate with them)
14
June 2017
 |
Federal
Political Negotiation and Consultative
Committee (FPNCC) members arriving in
Naypyitaw (Peace Commission)(Photo:monnews.org)
|
Today I’m on my way to Lawkhila/Lewa to attend the UPC21CP
review meeting there.
Before leaving I make a phone call to
our “partner” in Rangoon to inquire the government’s stand on the negotiations
with UNFC/DPN and the Federal Political Negotiations and Consultative Committee
(FPNCC), the latter led by the Wa. His reply:
The government doesn’t have any plans to amend the NCA. If ‘
the UNFC/DPN wants further clarifications and we reach agreement on them, we
can add them to the attached decisions. (According to the NCA’s Paragraph 30,
decisions taken during negotiations shall be taken into account during the
implementation.)
He thinks the same principle will be applied in its negotiations
with the FPNCC. So far there has been no indication that Naypyitaw is planning
to deal with the 7 northern armed movements that make up the FPNCC
collectively.
Today, we put up in Mae Sot. Tomorrow we continue our way to
the KNU HQ.
15 June 2017
 |
Lawkhila meeting hall room.
(Photo:KNU)
|
Until the military is brought under civilian control,
and it soldiers held to account, the circle of violence will continue and the
civilians will bear the brunt.
Amnesty International, 14 June 2017
Lewa meeting hall is full of KNU officers when we arrive.
There are many who I’ve known since 1983 when I first make contact with the KNU
as a delegate from the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), like Thamein Tun,
Soe Soe, etc.
Here are the extracts from the presentations:
§ The UPC21CP can be called the meeting
point of three movements:
1. The NLD, whose main objective is
democratization
2. The EAOs, whose main objective is
federalization, and
3. The Tatmadaw, whose main objective is
protection of the 2008 constitution
§ We now have a new agreement whether
we all agree with it or not. What do we do with it? How do we make it into a
law?
§ We have all made mistakes.
Fortunately, we can survive this one. But we and the people we work for will be
in big trouble, if we repeat it.
Remember, the old saying:
Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me
§ The Secretariat must be neutral, professional,
follow rules and protect the process. Our mistake was that its members are also
UPDJC members. So they follow their interests instead of rules
§ Meeting of 700 people is not the
place for dialogue, only for votes and statements
This evening we put up at the River
House in Mae Sariang, some 80 km from Mae Salit Luang, opposite Lewa.
 |
Ms Zipporah
Sein (Photo:DVB)
|
16 July 2017
Ms Zipporah Sein, former vice president of the KNU, drops in
at our hotel in the morning. As her views are already on the internet, I won’t
add anything here. The only thing I’m really interested is the unity of the
KNU. To my question, which she must have heard several times, she is ready with
an answer:
“This should not be of worry for all
our well wishers, because the KNU wnity is based on firm principles (not on
factions).”
At 16:00, I’m back in my office in Chiangmai.
18 June 2017
 |
U Thant
(1909-1974)
|
This
morning I receive the most extraordinary letter from a young friend. It was a
declassified memo written by a former British ambassador to Burma to White
Hall, dated 11 March 1975.
The
letter discusses the U Thant funeral affair that took place in Rangoon in
December 1974, 3 months earlier.
What intrigues me is the postscript, in which he
describes talking to an illustrious lady from Burma who was then living abroad.
“She takes a characteristic Burmese anti-Shan line that these demonstrations
were contrived by Shan influences…(she) was not prepared to concede that there
might have been something spontaneous about the whole thing,” he wrote.
Until
now, I have never heard of “a characteristic Burmese anti-Shan line.”
And I, like most people inside and outside Burma, thought that the whole event
was basically a knee-jerk action, probably exploited by “2848” activists
affiliated to the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). That anyone would suspect
Shans as the mastermind was a thought that never occurred to me.
I
later talk to Shan politicians in Rangoon who, no less surprised than me, said
they had advised all Shan students within their reach not to get themselves
involved, as this was just an “intra-Burman affair,” nothing to do with Shans.
“However, not all of them were within reach,” one says. “And some of them
wouldn’t listen to our advice anyway.”
I
know. One of my friends went to jail for it, and another was expelled from
school. Fortunately or unfortunately, I wasn’t among them hotheads. As I was
already a full-fledged armed resistance member since 1969.
After
reading the letter again and again to make sense of it, I begin to wonder if
there were still other ladies―and gentlemen―like her who are still firmly
taking the “characteristic Burmese anti-Shan line” 43 years after, who are
ready to believe that if something bad happens, Shans must be behind it. And if
they were at the helm of power in Naypyitaw today, what is going to happen to
the peace process.
Not
that we Shans don’t have our own ladies and gentlemen like her. Among us, one
will find no dearth of those who are fond of saying the 19th century
American equivalent of “A good Indian is a dead Indian.”
Happily,
we also have not a few of those who say, “In my experience, no human race is
meaner than the Burmese. And paradoxically, no human race is nobler than the
Burmese either.”
For
the sake of all the people living in this land, I hope we find more of the
latter these days.
28
June-2 July 2017
 |
PPST meeting
in Chiangmai on 28 Jun-2 July 2017,
Than Khe is the speaker on
the extreme right.
(Photo: ww.moi.gov.mm)
|
For 5 days , the Peace Process
Steering Team (PPST) and the Peace Process Working Team (PPWT) embark on a
meeting on what areas the signatories should focus in its upcoming “review and
reform” workshop.
I have taken some 30 pages of notes. But I find only two
excerpts to report, both given by Yebaw Than Khe, Chairman of the All Burma
Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), whose cheerful attitude, despite all the
problems he’s facing, brightens the participants throughout the meeting:
§ In the village of, say EAO, the
headman has 3 people he can rely upon, when he needs to talk to representatives
from a neighboring village. They are Buthi, Chet Kyi, and Bike Hsu. The problem
is he can’t do anything without them and he can’t do anything if he keeps
relying only on them.
Because
Buthi, he’s a henpecked husband. He can’t go anywhere without making sure that
the day’s main meal is cooked and ready.
As for
Chet Kyi, he can’t be asked to do anything once he’s drunk, which is quite
often.
With
Bike Hsu, the problem is he likes cockfights. So whenever there is a match
outside the village, he can’t be found.
At the other end, the headman from
another village has a big bunch of representatives to deal with problems. For
money matters, he can send one. For water issue, another one, and so on, while
the village of EAO has only 3 to deal with whatever bilateral problems that
come up.
§ The NCA is like a ship. Our people
are the passengers. Among them, we also see prominent persons like some of
those coming from Naypyitaw riding on top deck who know little or nothing about
the ship. We (I think he means not only the EAOs but also the Tatmadaw) are the
rowers. And we have a problem here. Some of us want to row it forward, white others
want it to go backward. The result is clear: the ship won’t move.
So what do we do? If we keep doing it
the way we have been, we won’t be going anywhere. And if we get angry and burst
it, it will sink with us and our people in it. We need to find a way to reach
agreement with the other rowers.
The meeting ends with a resolution to hold a workshop on
20-27 July at Lawkhila to discuss on topics which include:
§ NCA implementation review
§ Framework on Political Dialogue (FPD)
Terms of Reference (TOR) review
§ Structure of National Dialogues
§ Sequencing of topics
§ Timeline
The results are expected to be submitted to the PPST by the
end of the month, and decisions early in August. After which the PPST/PPWT will
discuss with the NRPC/PC for agreement.
No plain sailing there for sure. A lot of meetings, both
formal and especially informal, will be needed before both sides can agree to
go ahead with the next UPC21CP. And all the negotiators on both sides have my
sympathy and encouragement.
But I also remember what my teacher once said:
There can be only two mistakes one
can make on the road to the truth: not starting it, and not going all the way.
It’ll be nice to know what “truth” is waiting for us at the
end of the road though.
Tags: Opinion
