Disgraced Akbar adds spice to ASEAN parliamentarian meet
Disgraced Akbar adds spice to ASEAN parliamentarian meet
Ben Rowse, Agence France-Presse, Hanoi
Disgraced Indonesian parliament speaker Akbar Tandjung will be among the Southeast Asian politicians who will gather on Monday in the Vietnamese capital for talks on human rights, terrorism and other regional issues.
A delegation from the European Parliament, which arrived in Hanoi on Saturday in a bid to meet detained religious leaders, amid concern it has been refused meetings with detained church leaders, will also attend the 23rd general assembly of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO),
The visit, led by Germany's Hartmut Nassauer, was prompted by a resolution passed by the European legislature on July 5 last year calling for the release of religious prisoners in Vietnam, which maintains tight control on all spiritual activities.
Hanoi subsequently declared it would show zero tolerance to any individuals or organizations asking to conduct human rights investigations in Vietnam.
Other delegates arrived in the capital on Sunday for the annual event, which was held last year in Bangkok.
AIPO is made up of the eight states with parliaments from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The other two ASEAN members not part of the AIPO grouping, Brunei and Myanmar, have no legislatures but will attend the meeting as observers.
A spokesman for Indonesia's Attorney General Office said on Saturday no travel ban had been imposed on Akbar preventing him from attending the assembly.
The seasoned and shrewd legislator, who is also chairman of the former ruling Golkar Party, was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday for misusing some US$4.5 million in state funds. He remains free pending appeal.
Nguyen Van An, chairman of the National Assembly, Vietnam's rubber-stamp parliament and about whom murky rumors still linger about his links to an explosive gangster scandal, will give the inaugural address on Monday as the current president of AIPO.
Vu Mao, the body's secretary general, told reporters last week that measures to boost economic, cultural and social cooperation in the region, including the establishment of an ASEAN university, were also on the agenda.
"AIPO will support ASEAN government efforts at promoting economic integration and in other fields by providing a legal framework to develop the spirit of ASEAN."
Mao, chairman of Vietnam's parliamentary external relations committee, said the general assembly would also strive to strengthen the relationship between ASEAN and AIPO, which he compared to that of a country's executive and its legislature.
"In each of our countries the relationship between these two branches is very close, however in ASEAN this relationship has not been as we have hoped for."
Delegates from 10 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the United States, will also attend the meet as observers.
But, in what is likely to fuel further skepticism over the usefulness of yet another regional talkshop that operates on a consensus basis, the wives and spouses of delegates have also been invited for "sightseeing and shopping".
On Thursday, the day after the formal closing ceremony, the legislators will travel to Vietnam's UNESCO world heritage site of Halong Bay to visit its 3,000-plus towering limestone islands rising from the Gulf of Tonkin.
AIPO was initiated by Indonesia in 1974 and officially established as an organization in 1977.