For the next few days, the Philippines will be in the limelight. The whole world will be watching as we host the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has grown from the time when five countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines banded together to form a regional organization dedicated to facilitating economic, political, military and cultural integration amongst member Asian states.
Asean’s original five-nation grouping has since 1967 increased to ten, to include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Early on, in 1963, Presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Indonesia’s Sukarno met in Manila to proclaim a pan-Malayan organization called Maphilindo, which was scuttled as soon as it was formed when the latter declared a confrontational policy against the then Malaya.
Before that, through the auspices of the Americans, a Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, patterned after Nato, was put up to counter growing Communist threats across the region.
But Asean has withstood the test of time, and is now 50 years old. While it is coincidence that the Philippine president is now the chair of the Asean on its 50th year, it also highlights the fact that our country has always been pivotal in the formation and strengthening of the regional grouping.
The ten-member aggrupation aims to accelerate economic growth and progress among its members as well as promote regional stability while resolving differences amongst each other peacefully.
Yet 50 years since its founding, it has been criticized for being “too soft, too loose” and given to just annual gatherings that produce little. This may not be a fair assessment, as it has promoted steps towards integration, such as the Asean free trade deals and its zero-tariff among members to promote regional trade.
Unlike the European Union, which began with a European Economic Community, Asean’s way is less formal and more inter-personal. Consensus is the rule in all conferences, where delegates consult each other and try to iron out differences in policies and programs via small compromises. Conflicts, if any bigger than minor, are often kept under wraps, and if consensus is not achieved, decision-making is put off for a more propitious time.
It is called the Asean way, and contrasts with the Western way where candor is more visible to the public.
Take the present situation in the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, where some half a million Rohingya are forced to flee because of what many perceive to be some form of ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist majority against the small Islamic community. On its 50th year, Asean as a group has not publicly come up with a common stand on this humanitarian crisis. Our president has spoken about the plight of the Rohingya, in an oblique way of questioning the interference of human rights activists who keep pestering him with criticisms about the conduct of his war on drugs while being eerily silent on the humanitarian crisis that has befallen a poor minority on account of religio-cultural differences. As often, Duterte has been exception.
Or the South China Sea issue, where several Asean states have territorial disputes with China. Each member-nation is left to his own devices in confronting the dispute, such as when former President Benigno S. Aquino III filed a suit in the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
In the course of its existence, Asean has also enlarged the concept of regional cooperation to include first three of its richest neighbors, namely China, Japan and South Korea. Thus, many of its conferences include these three countries and agreements have been forged in what is now called Asean Plus Three. This writer was one of those who participated in the long process that resulted in an Asean Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve agreement, where nations committed to provide a rice reserve contribution to prevent spikes in prices of its staple food commodity. This was in reaction to the rice crisis of 2008, when the world market price of rice shot through the roof, and rice-deficient nations such as ours saw poor people forming long lines for their daily rice consumption heavily subsidized by government, then under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
The plus-three countries have likewise come up with the largest rice-reserve contribution, realizing that rice is both an economic and political commodity being the staple food of all of the region, theirs included. Food security after all impacts most on regional stability.
Further on, Asean has also forged links with other countries far removed geographically from the Southeast Asian region, such as the US, Russia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But it is certainly far from being a community similar to the European Union, with a single currency and a Schengen visa covering almost every member state.
Still and all, we must take small steps towards solidifying and strengthening the 50-year old aggrupation. With 2020 just around the corner, what will happen to Asean’s 2020 Vision? It is confronted by many problems, not the least of which is globalization, which has benefited some nations more than others, and which is currently being challenged by an insularity in the American president’s policy thinking.
In the next few days, our country shall be in the limelight while hosting an historic summit of leaders, and it is perhaps propitious that Asean’s chairman in this summit marking fifty years is someone who finds the ways of “quiet diplomacy” too tedious, and is always anxious to achieve desired results quickly.
We can only wish Asean well, and hope that in our lifetime, economic integration of ten countries with a combined population of some 650 million, of which Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam constitute 450 million, will yet come to fruition.