RMUNC

Ok, the event is like around 2 months ago....so the timing of this post is "a bit" Kian Yang. But anyway, here's what happens generally:

I received a private emb msg that notified me that I'm participating in RMUNC (Raffles Model United Nations). Apparently all the delegates selected are either those who went for THIMUN or want to go for HMUN this year. So anyway, I'm in.

Then I went for some briefing at RJC. Interestingly, all of us need to prepare some ppt which states our country's stand and planned solutions and so on. Apparently this is for the chair to judge how well-prepared are we. And then the conference is set in 1982 during cold war, and not 2006, so "outdated" info suddenly became the most "up-to-date" ones.

After missing a few meetings whereby allocation of council were discussed and stuff, we were notified that HCI will represent Russia (aka USSR) and Zimbabwe. So anyway I'm in ECOSOC doing Debt Crisis.

I'm quite glad that I'm not doing GA4, as it's highly technical which makes it well very boring and hard to understand. Moreover, since it deals with special political issues like say Israel and Palestine, it takes almost forever to just deal with the ownership of Jerusalem.

And obviously, we needa prepare the ppt and start to read up on stuff, as teachers (SLIM and Sunita) will be looking at it. I wonder whether I prepared enough, but I certainly dont know more than others. Moreover, I can't find stats for my own country's debt and so on. LOL LOL.

Then one day, someone added me on msn. Apparently, she is Alan's friend, and added me for lobbying and some sort of "consulatation". So we exchanaged our ppt and gives suggestion for improvement. It turns out that others often spam the RMUN official yahoo grp for msn contacts for lobbying. LOL, and I just stone. So anyway, up to the time the conference starts, I only have MOST (not even all lor) HCI's contacts and Zi Wei's contact. Ok, that's "a lot".

So the actual ppt quite screwed of cos. I dont really know what I'm talking about and the chair caution me. I went home to do a working paper, as I'm too lazy to do a resolution.

Day 1 conference: Stoned mostly, so kena scolded by the Chair. LOL. But I did speak a few times against the USA's resolution of cos. I don't quite understand why the USA wants me to support his side. Obviously, it would be a major diplomatic coup if he succeed, just imagine the 2 superpowers WORKING HAND IN HAND! I also agreed with him that our proposed solutions are quite similar. However, my job is to OPPOSE USA. Sorry then. In the end, I joined another bloc formed by UK and sorta contributed to their reso.

Day 1 night: After being heavily criticised by so many people for not performing the role of Superpower, I decided to came up with my own resolution. However as we needa fix the computer, I only went online at like around 10 pm. Feeling boliao for one moment, I talked to Iran (aka Zi Wei) and asked what she is doing. It turned out that Iran, being anti-US, had found a bunch of countries (sorry, should be "alliance") who are waiting for me to work together on an alternative resolutions. Ok lor...ji I need to find allies?

So anyway I shared my ideas with them infused with lots of "socialist" (I'm supposed to be communist) ideology. I koped some ideas from others' resolution, my own working paper and "The End of Poverty". There's a 5-point plan inside which lists way to stablise an economy, which I amended for our anti-US, socialist reso. We split up the work amongst the alliace, consisting primarily of India, Saudi, Iran and USSR. Guyana also contributed. As we cannot finished in time, we decided to meet up tomorrow at J8's Mac to iron things out.

Day 2: Iran was very late, but we started work anyway. So basically, everyone take out their work and combine. India (or is it Saudi?) promptly worked on it for almost the whole morning of the conference. And I myself, being the head of all communists, sent out lots of notes to publicise. And obviously, I went up to speak a few times. Things were looking up. :)

However, everything changed during the lunch. UK decided to merge his reso with USA, which effectively means that there wont be space for any opposing bloc to propose a new one, since you can only sign one at a time. So I need to defeat the merged reso which I signed, otherwise my reso would be totally useless since I cannot get enough signatures to get it debated. (You can only sign one reso at a time. If it's passed, you cannot sign again). SO SCREWED.

And of course, I cannot even find 12 countries to sign the reso. I think USSR is really unpopular. Cuba's absence and the Sino-Soviet split doesn't help either. And apparently, we are involved in Somalia and Afghanistan's war so they wont support us either. What ter heck! USSR is a powerless superpower.

Then after that, we had the RMUN crisis. Apparently, because Falkland Island had Diamonds, everyone wants a share of it by claiming the island is theirs. So there's 2 camps: one group wanna resolve it by settling the ownership first, while the other just want to have a share of the diamond for funding to resolve the debt crisis.

And ridiculously for the USSR, we were supposed to invade them! We proposed a joint alliance with China, but of cos there's the Soviet-Sino split. So we were left quite alone and we just dao the thing. To put it simply, logical solutions that will get support does not seems logical for USSR's interest. If we wanna protect our interest, we wont get any support. What ter heck!

Interestingly, I read from someone GP's notes on my trip to RJC, that small nations often want a "referee" like UN to enforce the rule, while major powers wants more room to manoeuvre (often by upsetting the rule). Moreover, it sounds logical for a major power to exert his influence and assert his power by taking active steps to protect her vested interest. Unfortunately, self-interest often go against collective ones.

Day 3: After completedly giving up, we just dao the thing. The next day, a reso, which referred the case to SC, was passed resolving the stupid crisis. Our debt crisis meeting went on for another 90 minutes. For some reason, nothing got passed due to a lack of time. It would be a success of the council to pass the reso, but then it would seems as a failure on our part. And of cos, my alternative reso was laid to waste.

Then we had our fashion parade. Our rasputin was well, entertaining, but not artistic. Same goes for Zimbabwe. And I think the D n D rocks lah, especially the band, though nobody really dances unless you count jumping and down for no reason...

So obviously I didnt get any prize for the whole conference, but I admit it's quite a good experience nonetheless.