'ASEAN must be more open to work faster'

In connection with the ongoing 37th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), the 11th ASEAN Regional Forum and the Post-Ministerial Conferences in Jakarta, ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong talked to The Jakarta Post about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and these meetings. Following is an excerpt of the interview:

Question: What is your impression of Indonesia's chairmanship of ASEAN as well as ARF?

Answer: Well, the Indonesian chairmanship has been very proactive.

Undoubtedly, Indonesia has raised many important issues for all of us to think about and to discuss and tried to portray common understanding. On that count alone, I think Indonesia's chairmanship has been very beneficial to ASEAN's own development.

Of course, you can't expect everything to be all unanimous. Some of these issues that Indonesia raised are quite sensitive and are also fundamental issues. So people do speak up and we debate among ourselves. But this is a good and healthy thing.

We want to avoid just being always very nice, diplomatic and never addressing substantive issues. So, the chairmanship of Indonesia has led ASEAN in a direction to develop in a much more sophisticated level.

Are you satisfied with your job as ASEAN secretary-general?

Yes, I think people always mistaken the secretary-general of ASEAN as someone who should be given more influence or power. This is not the same with other countries. We in Southeast Asia do it differently. The secretary-general of ASEAN can be effective if he learns how to cooperate with all member countries, remind all the members about their obligations to implement what they agreed upon in the meetings.

So, generally speaking, secretary-general of ASEAN is a useful and influential position, but the influence is different from the secretaries-general of other organizations. They have it in a constitution, treaty or charter. In ASEAN, we don't have these.

So people think that, as a whole, the secretary-general may be not so effective, but I have been on the job now for one and a half years. I think it is effective and demanding.

It is the secretary-general who deals with officials, ministers and top leaders at various levels.

In other organizations, the secretary-general serves only officials of a certain level. So here in ASEAN, our secretary- general works with all levels of officials.

First, I am very satisfied with the position of secretary- general. I think this is a good arrangement.

We are required to do a lot of things, but the amount of resources available is limited. Because right now, there are so many meetings. The secretary-general has only about 50 professional staff and 130 Indonesian staff to support him, so it may not be so sufficient, but this is something that we will always try to add to or improve. So it is not an obstacle for us to do more.

What kind of measures are needed to make ASEAN work faster?

In order to make ASEAN work faster, it would be better to follow what the Indonesian chairmanship started. They (Indonesia) put the difficult issues on the table. OK, here is a sensitive issue, can you tell me your opinion? Can you say why you don't agree? Can you tell me of other opportunities or alternatives if you don't agree?

So all 10 countries now sit down openly and discuss (matters). Because the reason we sometimes work slowly is because sometimes we don't like some ideas, but we don't speak up, we just keep quiet.

Now under the chairmanship of Indonesia, we have to speak up, and when we speak up and other people say, "Oh, this is your concern." Not a problem.

So this way, I think, it convinced me that one way to accelerate the working of the ASEAN process is to be more open, to be more transparent.

So I think in this one year, we actually have done a lot. The Bali Concord (for example), and now we have finished discussions on plans of action on ASC, ASCC and on other international issues like counterterrorism and so on.

Do you have any problem with funding?

Funding, yes. Funding will always be a problem, because we never have any money. But we now adopt the attitude that if you say no money, no work. You can't go anywhere.

If you need to do something, just do it. Then if there is not enough money, we are going to tell our leaders, our friends to say, "This is a very good project, can you help us?" or we tell the leaders, "Sir, you want us to do so many things, everybody agrees now, we just need some additional resources. Can you provide some to us?" So we don't always put dollar signs on our job, otherwise there would be no progress.

During the ASEAN summit in Bali last year, it was agreed that Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore should prepare the action plans for the ASEAN Security Community (ASC), the ASEAN Sociocultural Community (ASCC) and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) respectively. Out of these three, according to you, which can be implemented the fastest?

Indonesia is chairing the ASEAN Security Community work. We have finished our discussions on the plan of action and the ministers of ASEAN will now consider it. So in terms of sequencing, we expect our plan of action for the ASC to move ahead. We are also now talking about the plan of action for the ASEAN Sociocultural Community, which is chaired by the Philippines. Likewise Singapore in the case of the ASEAN Economic Community.

Last year, we already completed the AEC plan.

We also agreed few months ago that we would discuss the plan on ASCC after we finish the ASC plan.

I can't say which plan will be slower than the other. In each plan, certain things have already happened. So, we have to just speed it up.

So, the important thing is not which plan is faster or slower. The important thing is that all that we want to do for each of these plans can be implemented.