Crisis blocking the road to ASEAN democracy

Crisis blocking the road to ASEAN democracy

An economic crisis concentrates Asian minds powerfully on the other issues which are usually brushed aside. On Tuesday in Manila, the nine-member ASEAN grouping joined with its Western partners to set up a forum on the social costs of economic failure. Thailand, which proposed the new body, said that "social unrest is now the most real threat to security in Asia". Such language would have been inconceivable a year ago.

The Thai foreign minister had already led the way when the ASEAN meeting gathered last Friday, urging his colleagues to speak more frankly about democracy, deprivation and the environment. He was backed by his host: a stronger ASEAN, the Philippines foreign secretary said, had to speak out on "thorny issues".

Other ASEAN countries -- particularly Singapore which takes over the chairmanship -- are more reluctant. Malaysia continues to insist on the "time-honored principle" of non-interference. The result was a cautious agreement to allow "enhanced interaction" to discuss issues within member states which had external implications. In reality unrest anywhere in the region can quickly impact elsewhere, as the news from Yangon and Phnom Penh underlined Tuesday.

In Cambodia international pressure up till now for free and fair elections has been directed towards the ruling regime of Prime Minister Hun Sen -- fairly enough in view of his dubious record. The latest development in which the royalist Fucinpec is crying foul presents a more complex situation. The UN observers may have been too keen before the elections to give Hun Sen a clean bill of health, but the actual elections do appear to have passed relatively smoothly. Unless hard evidence of fraud can be produced, the result must stand. The Cambodian opposition should be reminded of the disasters which have occurred elsewhere when one party rejected a popular vote. Boycotting the assembly would only give Hun Sen the pretext to establish what really would amount to one-party rule.

ASEAN has said it is watching the political process in Cambodia very carefully but it still dodges the bigger problem of Myanmar (Burma), which it admitted to membership last year. Only the non-ASEAN nations of Japan and South Korea joined Tuesday's call for the junta to stop blockading Aung San Suu Kyi -- now immobilized for the fifth day in her car. Already a heroic fighter for the social justice which ASEAN is beginning to acknowledge, she deserves much better from her fellow-Asians.

-- Guardian News Service