Learning to share: Another story for our time
Last
week, there was a discussion on whether the Union constitution adopted in
2008—by questionable means―should be amended or rewritten.
Nobody
had asked them whether they wanted it amended or rewritten.
The
answer, had the question been asked, would have been unanimous: they all wanted
a new one.
In
fact, the new one had already been drafted and adopted by the
pro-democracy (and procedural) EAOs, political parties and activist groups on
12 February 2008, 3 months before the popular referendum, based on the 8
guiding principles endorsed 3 years earlier:
1. Sovereign power derives from
the people
2. All the indigenous peoples
of the Union enjoy equal rights, both political wise and ethnic wise
3. All the indigenous peoples
have right of self-determination in the fields of politics, economy, social and
culture
4. The Union must be formed
with states that fully enjoy the right
of self determination
5. The rights of all minorities
that reside in the federal units are safeguarded by the constitution
6. Fundamental human rights and
rights must be guaranteed by the constitution without discrimination of
religious beliefs, color, or gender
7. The Union practices
secularism
8. The Union practices
multiparty democratic system
Those
who follow the country’s ongoing peace process which began in 2011 will notice
that all these guiding principles have now become an integral part of the basic
federal principles to be negotiated and adopted at the Union Peace Conference
(UPC) also known as the 21st Century Panglong (21CP).
However,
what is not part of it is the draft they had adopted 9 years earlier, a
situation which go against their grain.
Someone then brought the
following story to the discussion:
A
man is left in the desert by his friends who have robbed him of everything
including his horse. Not giving up, he travels on foot, usually at night, to
conserve the water in his body.
On
the third day, chirping of birds in the distance draws him to a small pool
among some desert willows. The only problem is a coyote, long dead, is lying
there.
He
knows he has to make a choice:
·
To drink it, he has to purify it as best he can first
·
To dig a new pool, for which he doesn’t have enough strength unless he
has something to drink first
·
Or to go further, which he knows well is out of the question unless he
has a good supply of water
His
decision, after consideration, is to go through all the three given options:
First,
he drags the dead coyote out of the water. Then he gathers sticks and build a fire.
He scoops up some water with the pot he is carrying, covers it with charcoal
from the fire, and boils it again. When it has boiled, he skims off the scum
from the surface, adds more charcoal, lets it boil again, and again skims it.
After
it has cooled down, he allows himself the first real drink in three days. In
this way, he soon has a small supply of water, which he drinks while emptying
the poisoned water in the pool. By the next nights, it is full with clean water
again.
Three
days later, he is back to civilization.
“So
what happens next? A cowboy story never ends like this,” asked one of the
participants.
The
answer comes right back. “Of course, he has a showdown with his former friends,
comes out on top, and takes back his possessions.”
“That’s
what I want to hear,” he says.
Maybe
we can follow the same procedure this fictional character went through in
dealing with the constitutional issue?
Something
to think about.
Tags: Opinion
