Time for ASEAN to act on Burma

Time for ASEAN to act on Burma

ASEAN will be unhappy if tension between Burma's dictators and its legally elected democratic government escalates into violence, says Domingo Siazon, the foreign minister of the Philippines. The region, he points out, is going through a spot of bother and the last thing it needs is political instability, which, like economic turmoil, has a knack of spreading.

If ASEAN were to have a word with itself about its performance with Burma, it may find embarrassment, even shame, a more appropriate emotion than unhappiness. It was ASEAN that afforded an illegitimate regime a respectability it does not deserve in a strategy that did not work. If violence erupts in Burma, the people of that impoverished nation will find a good deal more to be unhappy about.

It is more than a year since ASEAN admitted the junta to its little club and little, if anything, has been done to induce it to behave itself. The approach has been one of all carrot and no stick, which has been taken by the junta to mean it can carry on in the way it knows best. By allowing this to happen, the supporters of Burma's admission have overlooked the founding principles of ASEAN -- to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development.

Burma may have been more attentive to its critics in ASEAN when everyone was rolling in money and a reward was in sight, but its admission coincided unhappily with our own well-documented economic travails. All that has happened is that we have a new member which will not change its ways and is viewed in the international community as something of a diplomatic skunk.

Since the junta's admission, much has changed, not least in the economies of its new friends. Gone are the backers of large- scale investment projects who proclaimed development would nurture democracy, gone is the generosity of regional countries that have to tend to problems closer to home.

Regional partners, such as Indonesia, are taking steps, albeit faltering, towards political reform, and its military is being restrained; the Philippines has pulled off a fair election; we have our new constitution. Even in time of economic trouble, progress is being made, but not in Burma, which is no stranger to the bankruptcy brought upon the country by the people that ASEAN has chosen to embrace.

The more forward-thinking members of ASEAN, not least Thailand, are anxious now to engage Burma in a way that does not give the junta carte blanche to engage in further thuggery and oppression. The realization is a little late but it is welcome, and it is significant that the movement originates in a country which borders Burma and is familiar with the ways of its rulers.

-- Bangkok Post