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