Post-Mahathir, ASEAN faces another crunch

Post-Mahathir, ASEAN faces another crunch

Pana Janviroj
The Nation
Asia News Network
Bangkok

This week's ASEAN Summit in Bali will bid farewell to
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is due to retire
shortly. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been more
than a sentimental journey for the Malaysian leader.

Whatever efforts Malaysia has made to strengthen ASEAN or
whatever benefits it has reaped from being an influential
founding member, the grand vision which Mahathir painted for the
regional grouping unfortunately was never realized.

That grand vision was to build on ASEAN and create the East
Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) in the 1980s. It was to be a
distinctively Asian-flavored economic grouping, that is to say
without the Americans and the Australians. But Thailand was among
those which did not go for it. Eventually the ASEAN Free Trade
Area (AFTA) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
forum emerged as alternative models.

But that is not to say that Mahathir's grand vision is all but
forgotten. The distinctive Asian values at least caught the
imagination of new and younger leaders such as Thai Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The later has always shown his
admiration for the outgoing Malaysian prime minister. Their eye-
to-eye meetings have become a talking point in diplomatic
circles.

Thaksin's own initiatives, the Asia Cooperation Dialog and the
Asia Bonds, designed as different types of vehicle for Asian
nations to work together and share the benefits, most certainly
were influenced by Mahathir's thinking on Asia.

And in Bali it is Thaksin, the rising star of Asian leaders
and one who perhaps is Mahathir's protege in mind and spirit, who
should pay greatest tribute to the retiring Malaysian leader.

Yet the challenges facing Thaksin in uniting ASEAN and moving
it forward are far from easy. If Mahathir's most recent legacy on
ASEAN was his strong support for the expansion of the regional
grouping to admit Burma, Cambodia and Laos as members, the ASEAN
era with Thaksin will be one of trying to hold the members and
their interests together.

At the Bali summit next week, the tradition of reaching
consensus among the 10 ASEAN member countries, which has been a
source of strength as well as weakness to the group, will give
way to an even greater two-track membership development at a time
of great change in world geopolitics.

For instance Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's
proposed ASEAN Economic Community is expected to be adopted by
member countries ready to do so such as Thailand and Malaysia.
The "ASEAN minus X" will make ASEAN more fragmented than before
but is seen as a possible savior in face of the dwindling
economic attractiveness of this region, particularly in terms of
foreign investment, which is going largely to China.

And more questions than answers have emerged on how different
members of ASEAN should approach the new world order. Will
Thailand, for example, broach a free-trade agreement with the
U.S. with the intention of merging it eventually with ASEAN's
economic interests?

Can Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines convince the
United States that the best way to engage China is to strengthen
ASEAN? Or will the ASEAN members be able to convince China that
the best way it can become a force to be reckoned with is to make
ASEAN strong? And what about Malaysia's controversial opt-out
clause on the automobile trade under AFTA, which has hurt ASEAN's
reputation?

These pending united or disunited strategies have emerged as a
challenge in themselves. But it all foretells one thing: One
single ASEAN member nation can undermine the clout of the entire
group, and no single ASEAN nation can go it alone or have the
bargaining power that the entire group can have.

Mahathir is leaving at a time when a new pragmatism in world
politics has given way to bilateralism. The Thaksin era will
increasingly be one in which national interests easily overshadow
ASEAN interests due to the immediate seductiveness of bilateral
economic deals and the ease with which patience can run out on
forging consensus among the group's members.

But the economics of togetherness continue to be the most
beneficial and obvious. And this week's announcement of the
detailed terms of Hong Kong's new trade pact with China is a case
in point. The deal will give Hong Kong companies preferential
access to 18 types of Chinese consumer in services including
banking, insurance, movies, advertising, construction and
shipping.

Policy-makers from Beijing and Hong Kong have given importance
to complementarity and the needs of cost-conscious service firms.
The same intensity cannot be said of the way ASEAN thinks or does
things. Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore continue to try and
outdo one another without giving due attention to synergy and
scale.

ASEAN was less than bold even when the opportunity presented
itself with the 1997 crisis. Can the post-Mahathir era be
different? There are some positive signs there, but only truly
visionary leaders can convince others to take that one giant
leap.