Day One. Wednesday, 15 January 2016

Every deck of cards needs a joker.

I’m that.

(Anonymous)

I don’t want to go. But I want to go.

There are good reasons why I don’t:

• The place is six hours time difference from where I’m living. Worse, it’s winter time and you know how cold it’s there. I’m not sure whether this already battered body of mine will be able to adapt itself to the rigors of them.
• Since the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), I had been waiting for the day when political dialogue would start. And it is already starting, 12-16 January.

On the other hand, I also have other reasons why I want to:

• Switzerland has been one of the countries I have always wanted to visit. Since I had , as a schoolboy,

  

  read the story of William Tell, who, under threat from Gesseler the tyrant, had successfully shot an apple off his son’s head. Later, as I grew older, I was introduced to the federalism practiced there by U Tun Myint of Taunggyi, the Shans’ foremost political writer.

• Battered or not, deep down in my heart, I know that if I don’t go now, there’ll be no second chance for me. Moreover, the Union Peace Conference (UPC) doesn’t need me. Besides, it is not going to go away. There’ll still be UPC#2, UPC#3, and so on. All I need to do is to stay alive.
• Switzerland, like Shan State, is a landlocked country, a multi-national one, to boot. Only a quarter of Shan State’s size, surrounded by powerful neighbors, and no rich natural resources worth mentioning , it has managed to overcome all the odds to become one of the most successful countries in the world. Surely, there’s a lot to learn from it.

Sao Yawd Serk, Chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA), and head of the delegation, while waiting for our plane at Suvarnabhumi, says there have been two issues hotly discussed at the UPC:

• How to reconcile the “one country, one military” principle and the non-Burmans’ call for “state defense forces”
• The demands by PaO, Palaung (Ta-ang), Wa and Tai Leng (Shan Ni) for separate statehoods

Well, I say to myself, our trip may be able to find some answers, if not all, to these questions.

Just before midnight, we are on the plane. The air hostess offers me a Jack Daniel for a night cap. With that in my belly, I hope to kill most of the 12 grueling hours of the flight to Zurich.