Panglong keeps hopes alive in Myanmar

Talking to people is better than firing guns at them. The third session of the 21st Century Panglong Peace Conference concluded on Monday with the adoption of 14 more basic principles that are designed to bring about peace and \reconciliation in Myanmar. The roadmap is broadening and growing more detailed, but it also reveals how much further there is to go. The goal is marked, but the path to it is difficult. 
Complicating matters is the fact that not everyone who needs to be attending the meetings in Nay Pyi Taw, the capital, was there. Several ethnic groups are pursuing their own goals, including the defence of their territory, at the point of the gun.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, has sought with these talks to carry on the spirit of the 1947 Panglong Agreement that Aung San, her father and the nation’s founder, reached with the ethnic groups. But the Panglong Conference launched in 2016 is in fact an attempt to implement the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) that the Thein Sein government and ethnic militias signed the year before. Ten of the signatory groups attended this year’s talks. Seven Northern Alliance groups that did not sign the NCA were invited to participate. The alliance leader, Gun Maw of the Kachin Independence Organisation, met Suu Kyi last Friday and agreed to at least keep talking.
The Northern Alliance – officially the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee – discussed concessions with the government unrelated to the NCA. And while no deal was struck, it was encouraging to see them meeting, given that Kachin militia clashed with state troops earlier this year, displacing some 8,000 people from their homes.
Meanwhile Suu Kyi, who chairs the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre and the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee, met separately with the NCA signatories. They agreed on 14 principles covering political, economic, social, land use and environment aspects. No further details were announced. These principles join 37 others settled upon in the second session in May 2017, so there are now 51 in the Union Accord.
Overall, the accord is aimed at establishing a “democratic and federal union”, two concepts – human rights and national unity – that have eluded Myanmar ever since is won its independence (as Burma) in the middle of the last century.
But several factors could derail the lofty goals of the Panglong Conference. One is the way the Tatmadaw – the military – and other bastions of power in Myanmar regard the ethnic minorities and how the ethnic leaders behave towards authority. The latest round of the conference seemed to illustrate how far there is to go to overcome such entrenched attitudes when there is so little willingness to compromise. No amount of noble principles agreed upon will move the country closer to peace and reconciliation until minds are opened and distinctions accepted.
Myanmar is a remarkably diverse society, racially, culturally and in terms of religion. The Panglong spirit first cultivated by Aung San was one of celebrating differences and sharing dreams of peace and prosperity. Seeing it as such will require both the people in power and the leaders of the ethnic minorities to open their minds and understand that, without compromise and mutual acceptance, the vaunted democratic federal union will remain out of reach.
Perhaps there is hope yet. The best news from the conference was that all participants agreed to meet again.