New era for ASEAN

Encouraging, more feasible and impressive. Those are the words that we used in our two successive editorials commenting on the results achieved by the 10 ASEAN leaders in their summit meetings with their dialog partners that concluded on Wednesday.

And why not? ASEAN leaders, at their own summit on Tuesday, endorsed a concept of an integrated ASEAN Economic Community, aiming to achieve a single market by 2020, with a free flow of goods, services and investment in a region of more than half a billion people. This was quite apart from the agreement reached by the regional grouping and two of its giant, nuclear-armed neighbors, China and India, covering free trade and security.

With almost three billion people in the east Asian region tied under a security umbrella and the same rules of good conduct, it will certainly help develop not only peace and stability but also prosperity in the region, said Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda at his media briefing.

Without doubt, it is a new era for ASEAN.

However, things are usually easier said than done. While some ASEAN members have turned their plans into action, others have not even liberalized their political systems, let alone moved toward a market economy, a reflection of the fact that ASEAN members range from monarchies to fledgling democracies and a military dictatorship. Besides, it has always been the ASEAN consensus, since its establishment in 1967, that all member countries should adopt the principles of noninterference in each other's domestic affairs regardless of size, culture or political system.

To achieve the golden goals mapped out in the summit, ASEAN, putting the differences of each member country aside, cannot help but work harder in molding its identity as a community that can withstand stiff challenges, be they political or economic in nature, and keep stability in the region on track.

Maintaining the ASEAN way and identity, more often than not, may involve positive "interference," often referred to as "constructive engagement," from one member country to another and this should by no means decrease the intensity of cooperation between member countries.

This was well demonstrated by Malaysia and Singapore when they offered to help contain the haze problem originating from forest fires on Indonesia's islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra.

At present, with an increasing number of transnational crimes like drug and human trafficking and piracy taking place in the region and worsened by the prevalence of terrorist attacks, ASEAN, whose role has won growing recognition from the international community, will have to be even more cohesive internally so as to ensure the security and safety of its 500- million population.

Member countries, without undermining their own national interest, should not erode the ASEAN identity and unity while conducting bilateral talks with dialog partners -- currently South Korea, China, Japan and India -- because, in the end, it is the ASEAN interest that counts the most.

United, ASEAN is a strong community that can have a say in maintaining world peace and prosperity; divided, it is but a collection of relatively small economies that still rely on Western, industrialized countries.