Put people first in ASEAN charter

Put people first in ASEAN charter

Michael Vatikiotis, The Straits Times, Asia News Network/Singapore

If the European experience is any measure, a bid by Southeast
Asian nations to frame a Constitution is doomed to failure. But
perhaps lessons will be learnt from the European Union's ill-
fated Constitution.

In the first place, the decision by foreign ministers of all
10 members of ASEAN to draw up a charter is to be warmly
welcomed. Since its inception in 1967, ASEAN has run its
deliberations on vaguely worded conventions and reached decisions
awkwardly through consensus. "Diplomacy by feel" is how former
ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino describes the style.

It tends to reduce areas of agreement to their lowest common
denominator, weakening mechanisms for free trade and protecting
authoritarian regimes like Myanmar's.

But times have changed, says Severino, a veteran diplomat from
the Philippines. He points to the region's urgent need to deepen
economic integration to stay competitive with emerging India and
China. There are also tricky issues that cut across boundaries
and need regulating: Migration, pollution and conflict, for
example.

"To tackle these issues, you need rules," he says. "You need
some agreement and concord on a set of common values."

Indeed, it is a good time to embark on a search for common
values in the region. The consolidation of democracy in
Indonesia, ASEAN's largest state, has finally set an irreversible
political course for the region. Most members states, with one or
two notable exceptions, are now firmly democratic.

There is weakening support for the once hallowed principle of
non-interference as forest fires raging in one country bring
noxious haze to another and call for collective action. The
tsunami last year forged a new willingness among neighbors to
help one another in times of crisis, and reinforced the need for
some kind of common security policy.

So what spirit would an ASEAN charter embody? Perhaps the most
fundamental principle is one that European charter writers
neglected to highlight and hence found their work rejected in
popular polls: The people of the region must come first. They
must be consulted on what they want their collective home of some
500 million citizens to stand for.

Conservatives will say that the majority of people have no
idea what ASEAN is. But if asked, most likely the people of
Southeast Asia would like to see a strong affirmation of freedom
and human rights somewhere pretty high up in the preamble.

Next, it is fair to assume that for ASEAN to make sense as a
cohesive region, there has to be a strong commitment to
integration. It is one thing to declare that ASEAN will be a
single community by 2020 and quite another to bring this about as
member states continue to insist on excluding one kind of
commodity or manufacture or another. Intra-regional trade is
still only a quarter of ASEAN's total volume compared to more
than 70 percent in Europe.

Finally, there should probably be a firm provision for
sanctioning members who do not conform to the charter. ASEAN's
prestige has suffered greatly from Myanmar's recalcitrance on
political reform. There are many in the region who would have
liked to see military junta expelled from the group. This is what
would have happened under a rules-based charter with a provision
for basic standards of political behavior.

It is too early to say how much of this wish list will be
incorporated in the draft charter to be considered by ASEAN
leaders at the end of 2007. We know that a group of eminent
persons will first meet to consider the broad outlines of the
document. They will report on their deliberations at the end of
next year. The charter itself will be drawn up by government
officials.

The hope is that this cautious two-step process is not a
formula for protecting vested political interests and avoiding
diplomatic sensitivities. Rather, those tasked with the job
should seek a wide range of views from all sections of society.
The model could be something like the way Thailand's liberal
Constitution was drafted in 1996 with the help of public debates.

There are encouraging signs that ASEAN's leaders are becoming
more sensitive to their people's wishes. Delegates from an
officially sanctioned summit of civil-society groups on the
sidelines of this year's East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur will
meet ASEAN leaders in a formal session.

Current ASEAN secretary-general Ong Keng Yong is confident
that the leaders will listen to what they have to say. "The ASEAN
society has matured," he says. "There is a recognition on the
part of our leaders that the monopoly of ideas in government can
no longer be sustained."

If that is true, then there is hope for an ASEAN charter.

The writer is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies.