Voices of attendees of UPDJC’s work committees

 May 7, 2017

The work committee meetings of the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) were held yesterday morning at the Nay Pyi Taw National Reconciliation and Peace Centre.

The following are the comments and explanations of the attendees.

Dr. Hlan Mhon Zarkhon of the Work Committee on Political Affairs said this is the second meeting of the work committee. In the first meeting, 20 basic policies were drawn out of five papers from regionally held national-level political discussions and one paper from the Tatmadaw. In this meeting, reviews and discussions will be conducted on papers submitted based on these 20 basic policies.

He said the duty of the work committees are to combine the suggestions in the papers from the national level political discussion into 3 proposals and submit to the secretariat of the UPDJC.

UPDJC secretariat would discuss the proposals comprehensively and submit the results to Union Peace Conference-21st Century Panglong 2nd meeting.

“There were agreements and disagreements in the discussions. We review the areas where there are agreements and disagreements”, said Dr. Hlan Mhon Zarkhon.

“For example, on the first basic policy, there seems to be similarity in the five papers from regionally held national level political discussions and one paper from the Tatmadaw, but in fact they are different in some small ways. Out of this, we select three points that are nearest to being the same and provide an explanation of why it was selected”.

Compared with other sectors, political affairs got the most suggestions from the national-level political discussions.
Some suggestions were left out at the committee level because the political dialogue process and the peace dialogue process is based on the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).

“The guideline to our committee in paragraph 1 of the NCA said the the Republic of the Union of Myanmar should be aligned towards the three main national causes in forming a federal union that provided full guarantees on democracy, national equality and self-determination that in turn is based on the principles of freedom, equality and justice”, Dr. Hlan Mhon Zarkhon.

“Some suggestions are against the federal system, democratic system, union system, and Our Three Main National Causes and thus were left out. We are selecting basic policies that provide full guarantees on democracy, national equality and self-determination in a federal union. In fact the committee is conducting its work based on the guideline of the fundamental policies included in the NCA”.

U Myo Win of the Work Committee on Security Affairs said the previous meeting had already defined what to discuss. There were two topics, national defence and national security, of which discussions were held on defence policy matters under the title of national defence.

There were standards set on drawing up a defence policy paper. Based on and in accordance with these standards, ethnic armed groups and political parties each submitted a paper on defence policy last week. The papers were obtained from national dialogue and will be submitted to the union level for further discussion.

U Naing Ngan Lin of the Work Committee on Social Affairs said the committee will issue the basic principles based on the regional paper from Shan State. At this meeting, discussions would be held until basic principles were achieved on resettling and rehabilitation of internally displaced person (IDP).

Mi Mi Phyo, Aye Aye Thant, Hmay Kyu Zin (MNA)

Ref; The Global New Light of Myanmar