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.