ASEAN membership

ASEAN membership

It is unfortunate that the period following the admission of
Myanmar into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations coincided
with a host, not to say a plague, of distractions. Had the member
states of the regional grouping been without distraction, they
might just have begun to see that ASEAN's policy of constructive
engagement had opened the door to a regime unable to behave
itself.

It was fortunate for the State Law and Order Restoration
Council, which claims to represent Myanmar, that its elevation to
full membership of the alliance was obscured in the news by an
unlikely alliance. The stars of the show were our own economic
bunglers, Hun Sen, the second and only copremier of Cambodia; Pol
Pot, whose personal Year Zero appears to have started; and George
Soros, the international financial devil whose stunning gains
caused Malaysia's prime minister to have stunning tantrums.

With each of these players doing their bit in their own little
way, the continuing bad behavior of the generals who rule Burma
and the collapse of the economy they have plundered since 1962
were consigned to the back burner. But this is not to say that
SLORC is not happy to have become the ninth member of the
regional club. Far from it. Rather than use membership as the
pretext to make SLORC behave itself, SLORC is using ASEAN to
justify its own warped behavior.

Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary 1 of SLORC, believes Myanmar
should raise its profile in ASEAN and host meetings to correct
what he claims to be false impressions of the country. The
remarks of Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt and the regimes behavior show that
ASEAN's policy of constructive engagement has been a very good
thing indeed, but only for a benighted and thoroughly brutal
dictatorship. ASEAN said it would apply pressure once Myanmar was
in the fold, but it appears to have been distracted, and
lamentably so.

-- The Bangkok Post