Communicating the ASEAN Message

"I think many journalists are not aware of the impacts of ASEAN's many achievement on us. It seems that if it is not a corruption case then they will not publish it. We realize that we have to change this" -- Dian, Foreign Ministry's director general for ASEAN affairs

Haven't we been here before?

Communicating the ASEAN message graced this blog, when I first started writing it in this way back in April 2007. Then, it was the Malaysian ASEAN Youth/Sports Minister who was encouraging the youth to face up to both global and regional challenges by learning about ASEAN.

Now, like a boon to the minister, we read that most youngsters are actually in tune with what ASEAN is doing:

It found students from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were most likely to identify themselves with the ASEAN, with 96 percent, 93 percent and 92 percent respectively.

Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam are the newest members of ASEAN, having joined the 10-nation grouping in the 1990s.

They are often referred to as the newest four, or CMLV, and their development lacks behind the other six member countries.

Students in Singapore had the weakest affinity toward the grouping, with some 49 percent saying they were citizens of the grouping.

Even if these are the latecomers expressing this opinion, it cannot hurt for ASEAN to know that they might be getting something right.

Furthermore, it was not that they were only in tune with what the regional grouping was doing but that they also identified themselves as citizens of ASEAN.

In my view, this is a great start, and very welcome news to the South East Asia grouping, especially in the light of the establishment of its Charter last year.

Work to be done
In the meantime, much needs to be done by the media--the purveyors of information, and often the putative gatekeepers to society--to showcase the works of ASEAN. This, at least, was what Indonesia was saying.

Superficially speaking, blame can be apportioned to the media for failing to write about ASEAN. Truth be told, if there is little interest in the first place, how can you expect editors to consider writing about it. Therein lies the paradox of reconciling a responsibility to encourage citizens to feel more in tune to the regional grouping, and highlighting what it means for them, with reporting actual news about the organisation--even if it is considered bad.

On communicating regional integration to citizens, there are hardly any black-and-white areas: these agreements are realities--whether we like it or not, and so it becomes incumbent on all and sundry in the media to do its level best to understand the issues inherent in them, and if it is not happening, use the media itself to question why it is not happening.

Surely, that can only be a small step to obtaining that critical and progressive view of regional integration?

ASEAN Apathy Bites the Dust with ASEAN Charter?

"ASEAN, as an inter-governmental organization, is hereby conferred legal personality," says the Charter.

According to the Blueprint, the AEC builds on four pillars: a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region, a region of equitable economic development, and a region fully integrated into the global economy

"When it (the Charter) comes into force, it has the potential to transform ASEAN from a loose grouping of countries into a more cohesive, more effective and a more rules-based organization,"

Even at a time when the South East asian regionalisms attitude towards erring members (viz: Pakistan in SAARC, and Myanmar in ASEAN) could be described as this side short of soporific, I have to confess that I am rather excited by the prospect of an ASEAN Charter. Excited, because it signals the beginning of what can be in the critical and progressive discussion on regional integration. What can be as in what is possible, where others might have failed.

I've intoned time and again how the Europeans rejected the constitution back in 2004, yet ASEAN leaders have managed to chalk, and pass it. As to whether it will translate to the citizens is a moot point.

Whatever the case will be, I believe history will look favourably on the 10-member regional organisation that has a population of 500 million [ECOWAS has 250-300 million, and is fifteen members] for having bitten the bullet to pass the Charter.

Highlights of the Charter include a compulsion by members:

to democracy and protection of human rights, the charter also mandates the establishment of a human rights body in the region and aims to turn the region into an European Union-style market.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071120/43/6nguj.html

Though I am wont to criticise the EU-one-size-fits-all that many regionalisms touch on at least once in their life, I am avoiding that here, because I think it's time to accentuate the positive step ASEAN has taken.

Let's remember that 4the organisation turned forty only in August this year. It didn't wait for its Jubilee before doing something constructive for its region!


Above all, and in all seriousness, ASEAN wants to use the Charter to facilitate an Asian Economic Community by 2015. Well, deadlines are great. (Isn't the world supposed to eradicate poverty by half by 2015?) What matters is that there is a framework, a structure that can be carried forward by posterity. ASEAN now has legal personality--and that certainly, four decades after it was established, can only be congratulated.

In many respects, however, I can understand why the celebrations over the charter eclipsed the UN envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari's visit in a way that made the meeting abortive. Put simply, the meeting didn't happen.

I surmise that not that ASEAN was denying that Myanmar is a nettlesome issue, but that to have brought the UN envoy would have been undermining the cohesion ASEAN tried so hard to fight for in taking more than two years to draft this lofty charter.

I have always been in favour of UN envoys--and it's not going to change anytime soon--but, again, I've seen a similar thing in West Africa with Cote d'ivoire when it launched its coup in September 2002.

ECOWAS also decided not to expel it, but brought pressure to bear through the collective voice of ECOWAS to bring normality to the country through...talk.

For all the necessary noise that the US is making by saying (through Susan Schwab, US trade representative) that ASEAN's relationship with Myanmar cannot be "business as usual", it makes sense that ASEAN is not going to break its party anytime soon! Let it cry when it wants to--but certainly not now that there has been a significant, critical and progressive development in ASEAN's regional integration.


quotations taken from the following links:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/20/content_7115277.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/20/content_7114354.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/20/content_7115085.htm

Here be Some Revelations: The European Union's View on Regional Integration (in ASEAN)

All's well that ends well--even in ASEAN, which has a very different kind of regional cooperation to that of the EU. You know you're doing something right, I suppose, when the EU tells you that your regional cooperation is the best and most successful in the world. Check these soundbites out by EU Parliamentarian, Hartmut Nassauer, invited to the 28th session of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly:

1. "We have good relations and strong economic links. The EU is a large investor and we create a lot of trade in Asean and vice-versa."

2. "Apart from having a common economic interest, our regional cooperation is the most advanced and successful in the world,"

3. "Until last year AIPA was still called the Parliamentary Organisation. It stresses parliamentary influence in Asean just like the European parliament"

A very superficial analysis would reveal, from these quotes at least, that the EU is no less than pleased with how ASEAN does business. It is evidently looking forward to ASEAN becoming a bigger bloc--as evidenced by this statement here:

Nassauer said the EU would support Asean the best it could in its efforts to speed up integration of the Asean community particularly on the single common market

I guess there can be nothing wrong with parties seeking to maximise cooperation, while contemporraneously lending credence to the maxim that there are "no permanent friends, only permanent allies", as so wittily enunciated by Palmerston with regard to British foreign policy in the nineteenth century.

So, you've got no bother, really, wondering why the EU would be making such proclamations at this time.

Either way, I'm bored. Bored because these pronouncements are nothing mere than reflections of a less-than-altruistic motive by the EU to woo the ASEAN region like never before. And here's the bombshell: the EU betrays itself by giving us mere mortals a sneak preview into how it conceives of regional integration. Read carefully:

the basic element for the EU approach of regional cooperation was

how to strike a balance between the super powers like China, India and the United States

.

"The only chance for the weaker and smaller states is for them to act together. For a balanced development, South-east Asian states had decided to act as a regional cooperation,"

he added.

If that be the case, why the hell will the European Union not leave Africa alone to manage its own regional integration? Why does it seek to force one for us--as evidenced by the aggressive pursuit of the Economic Partnership Agreement, slated for December this year?

Does it mean, therefore, that it's one rule for ASEAN, and another altogether for African Union's regional organisations?

ASEAN is 40, So What?

Don't celebrations commence during the Jubilee year? So why, honestly, would there be any reason for the Association of South Eastern Asian Nations to start at a time when it is 40 years old?

The reason for the celebration has everything to do with ASEAN's Charter!

In my previous post, I talked about how ASEAN would have succeeded where a more-developed bloc, like the EU, would have failed. It goes deeper, though. This ASEAN Charter, predicated very much on a rules-based and human rights-based set of principles would help strengthen the 10-member grouping, and probably make it more relevant for its contemporaries. As one might expect, Myanmar is not very keen.

It might probably be very happy that, as Channelnewsasia reports:

there is no consensus on the commission's scope, how it will operate or even when it will start

Evidently, the ts have to be crossed, anad the I's dotted -- particularly because ASEAN hopes tha, with this charter, it can transform itself into "a community with economic security and socio-cultural pillars by 2015".

I am very happy to read that ASEAN is not seeking all-out to emulate the European experience, and remaining mindful that other continents, like the AU and Latin American countries also have it, albeit in limited forms:

ASEAN should understand the European experience without idolising or aping it. After all, other regional human rights mechanisms exist in the Americas and Africa but work in more limited ways. In many cases, rather than emphasising court-like procedures, the systems give ample room for political negotiation and compromise.

But, let this not sound like I am being too pig-headed about the comparative approaches I have advocated before. I simply feel that in order for any serious analysis to take place on the state of regional integration in 2007, such approaches are more than critical.

I hope that the perfect does not become the enemy of the good. Judging by comments like below, one begins to wonder:

ASEAN may, similarly, begin its human rights initiative more modestly, while holding out the possibility of stronger mechanisms in the future. Where can ASEAN best begin?

The best place to begin is in the beginning! At least a charter is being chalked; the rest of the tweaking will needs take place.

Whilst all that tweaking takes place, other articles on the web, such as those by one Bunn Nagara, of the Malaysian Star newspaper are looking at the existentialist nature of ASEAN: where has it come from, and where is it heading.

He attempts at a description of ASEAN in the light of the new development of the proposed charter here:

Encouraged by economic policy harmonisation in a globalised world, some policy harmonisation in governance seemed desirable for regional cohesiveness.

The proposed Asean charter was supposed to cover human rights, as current chair Philippines had hoped, but collective assent through consensus found only nominal approval for a proposed regional rights watchdog.

I like that: regional cohesiveness.

It's something that some of the other Southern regionalisms in the AU, for example, could begin to reflect over!

Kudos to ASEAN!

Happy Birthday, ASEAN!