Future of ASEAN

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.