ASEAN's herd mentality simply emboldens Myanmar government
ASEAN's herd mentality simply emboldens Myanmar government
Kavi Chongkittavorn, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok
ASEAN foreign ministers meet this week in Jakarta to discuss
the grouping's prospects and problems. The likely outcome and
overall sentiment will lean towards dismay. After all, no one
expects ASEAN, which groups the diverse countries of Southeast
Asia under one roof, to rear its collective head at this meeting.
As host, Indonesia has the difficult and mammoth task of
shepherding this meeting along for two reasons. The first one has
to do with its own national agenda of pushing through the draft
action plan for the ASEAN Security Community (ASC), which, over
the past four months, has been watered down greatly.
Indeed Indonesia's interest is at stake here. Due to domestic
turmoil following the collapse of the Suharto regime in 1998,
ASEAN's biggest member has until recently maintained a low
profile. Now, with renewed confidence and a bolder vision,
Indonesia would like to reassert the leadership within ASEAN that
it enjoyed during the previous three decades. It would like to
reclaim its rightful place.
However, this has not been easy for Jakarta, judging from the
way ASEAN senior officials have dissected and responded to the
substance of the ASC action plan. The ASEAN foreign ministers
have to decide whether to adopt the plan now or leave it until
the summit in Vientiane in October. A few countries have
expressed great disappointment over the weakened plan and have
urged the host to delay adoption so it can be improved further.
For now, Indonesia has insisted that the revised draft, which
consists of more than 70 proposals, should be adopted at this
meeting. Jakarta fears that once its turn at the head of the
grouping ends it will not be able to oversee the content when the
next ASEAN chair, Laos, takes over later this week.
All the plan's prominent features, which Indonesia earlier
fervently hoped would propel ASEAN into a political and security
community, have either been amended or deleted.
The first casualty was the much-talked-about proposal to
create a regional peace-keeping force to be available to help end
conflicts within the region.
After four rounds of discussion, ASEAN senior officials agreed
that one element of the ASC was to establish a peace and
stability mechanism, a generic designation thought up to replace
the idea of regional peace-keeping forces in order not to provoke
any one.
The part that committed ASEAN members to holding free and
regular elections was also deleted. Most of the ASEAN countries
contended that the paragraph mentioning the promotion of
democracy and human rights, as well as the unchecked flow of
information and the building of open, tolerant and transparent
societies, was sufficient to make ASEAN more open and democratic.
Several ASEAN diplomats have blamed Indonesian senior
officials for their failure to consult ASEAN members on the draft
in advance. One of them said that while the draft was ideal and
contained imperatives drawn from the UN and other international
instruments, it did not reflect ASEAN thinking.
Worst of all, they said, they did not have the sense of
ownership at all. For example, the call for free and regular
elections could embarrass certain ASEAN members that do not have
them.
Apart from these controversial aspects, the plan outlines
ASEAN cooperation in fighting transnational crime and other
areas. The draft maintains ASEAN basis principles, including
unanimity, non-interference in members' internal affairs, respect
for national sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes and
comprehensive security. The security community is one of the
three pillars for the establishment of the ASEAN Community by
2020, which was approved by leaders of the organisation last
October. The other two pillars are the ASEAN Economic Community
and the ASEAN Social and Cultural Community.
Another reason is how Indonesia going to deal with the
grouping's only pariah member, Myanmar. Unlike in the previous
seven years since its admission, Myanmar's perpetuated political
crisiscontinue to punish the well-being of ASEAN-EU relations.
After more than 13 years of apprehension, Myanmar remains an
impediment to ASEAN-EU cooperation as some of the EU members want
to please ASEAN.
However, the enlargement of the EU in May saw 10 new members
enter the union. Some of them know first hand what it means to be
a pariah state. Now as new democracies and EU members, countries
such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia and others
want the EU to be firmer with Myanmar so that it is held
accountable for its actions.
Now ASEAN and the EU are looking for a way out, a compromise
rather, which is not easy. It has been suggested that Myanmar
should downgrade its representative at ASEM from the head of
state to the foreign-ministerial level to allow the EU leaders,
who could be reluctant to join the Myanmarese junta leader Prime
Minister Khint Nyunt, to attend the summit.
Will Myanmar accept such a formula? It will not be long before
we find out. Before the formation of the ASEM in1996, Myanmar was
the only thing standing in the way of ASEAN-European cooperation.
Now it continues to undermine the whole gamut of Asian-European
relations.
The Netherlands, which will assume the rotating presidency of
the EU on July 1, is trying to save the Asia-Europe summit and
wishes to see it proceed as scheduled.
Two important ASEM ministerial meetings concerning financial
and economic matters were cancelled recently.
Amid increased external pressure on Myanmar from the EU, ASEAN
is resorting to the herd instinct, aka the ASEAN Way, by
strengthening its solidarity and defending the pariah state,
reluctantly or not. Better this than face humiliation from
Europe.
Obviously this ingrained behaviour enables Myanmar to
repeatedly exploit ASEAN and hold it captive, as a group or
individual members, without changing its status quo since May
1990.
A withered ASEAN creates an unwavering Myanmar. Therefore the
EU must be rock solid. It is a contest of wills. As long as ASEAN
or Asia at large quarrels with Europe over Myanmar, the pariah
state wins.