Future of ASEAN

Call it by chance or by design, the flurry of ASEAN meetings starting on Tuesday will coincide with the final week of the one- month long presidential campaign. For incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri who is running for re-election, it will be her last chance to steal the limelight from the international community prior to the July 5 presidential election. The event will undoubtedly benefit her enormously as her four other rivals are left on the sidelines to do their last leg of local campaigning. Foreign affairs, by definition, is an extension of domestic events.

For ordinary Jakartans, the event will only add to the severity of their city's already chaotic traffic congestion, especially around the Jakarta Convention Center near the Senayan clover bridge and the Gedung Pancasila in the Foreign Ministry compound, as local and foreign dignitaries are transported to and from the two venues.

Lest we forget, many of these ASEAN leaders and other high- ranking dignitaries were the ones who helped boost Indonesia's image abroad when they bravely decided to attend the ASEAN summit in Bali two years ago, shortly after the Bali blasts that killed 202 people. A friend in need is a friend indeed, as the saying goes. Our visiting ASEAN guests are nothing less than our true friends.

As the chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia will again be hosting the 37th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) from June 29 to 30, followed by a meeting between ASEAN foreign ministers with the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea on July 1. On the same day, counterparts from other countries will meet in the context of Post Ministerial Conferences, which date back to the mid- 1970s. On July 2, Indonesia will host the 11th meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) attended by representatives from 23 countries in the Asia Pacific region.

The AMM's theme "Striving for Full Integration of ASEAN: A Prosperous, Caring and Peaceful Community" is a fitting one to mark the organization's bold aim of creating an ASEAN community by 2020. The AMM will also serve as a spring board to approve the plans of action for the ASEAN Security Community and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, which it is hoped will be endorsed in the next ASEAN summit in November 2004 in Vientiane.

Numerous issues will be highlighted in the meetings. Security in the ASEAN region is one of them. The regional grouping is grappling with the setting up of a security community, an Indonesian idea that had lukewarm support from other ASEAN member countries last year. There are several questions that need to be answered. How will member countries address the Straits of Malacca safe-navigation issue following Malaysia and Indonesia's rejection of Singapore's proposal for the U.S. Marines to patrol the area? A total of 50,000 ships sail through the narrow channel every year carrying important commodities including oil. How shall the region jointly address the issue of terrorism?

Although the issue of foreign troops looms large in these questions, foreign interference is something ASEAN can prevent from occurring. If ASEAN member countries are mature enough to stick together, this issue is a timely way to nurture this closeness in upcoming meetings. It follows that individual ASEAN members should abandon the past practice of going their own ways to overcome difficult problems. Singapore, for example, is known to have forged bilateral free trade arrangements with other industrialized countries.

Back to foreign troops, those who oppose them should make sure they can guarantee the security of the Straits of Malacca. This is easier said than done, considering the different levels of development of each of the 10 member countries, encompassing the third to the first world. Indonesia, for example, has yet to secure its part of the straits from rampant piracy. And what of the insurgency in Aceh? Or the yearly haze hazard from Indonesia's forest fires that dogs its nearest neighbors: Singapore and Malaysia?

It is clear there is a lot of homework to be done by Indonesia and each of the member countries as there are so many issues to discuss. We have yet to mention the democracy issue in Myanmar, the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula or the planned handover of authority in Iraq, which is certainly likely to pop up in the meetings. And the security issue is only one of the three pillars needed to build an ASEAN community by 2020. The other two are creating ASEAN as an economic and as a cultural community, each of which is a mammoth task by itself. It is also relevant to underline the farsighted vision of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, which was repeated on Monday by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad about the formation of the East Asian Community. This is a good topic to explore in the upcoming meetings.

ASEAN should get rid of its "NATO" (no action, talk only) image as there has been a lot of achievement in the past. Yet, it should also prove it is still relevant in this vast and ever- changing world.

ASEAN's future challenges will be enormous but the opportunity to prove once again Indonesia can maintain its traditionally strong leadership in the grouping lies wide open. It is a chance too good to miss.