Such views clearly reflect the mainstream thinking among officials of member states as well. Indeed, ASEAN governments have taken up a new habit of emulating the normative and vague language of the ASEAN Charter in their daily discourse. Blending the normative world and reality could be dangerously misleading for the future of ASEAN. Once again, ASEAN needs to do a reality check before such upbeat discourse creates another set of excessive and irrational expectations about the Association.
For example, the expectation that ASEAN will become more people-oriented does not correspond with the reality. One does not have to look at the entire Southeast Asian region to understand this point. Just look at Myanmar, one of the most recalcitrant members of ASEAN. While ASEAN officials are busy celebrating the ratification of the charter by all its members, and stepping up the campaign promoting the document, people are being rounded up, sent to the junta’s own version of gulags in remote areas, and the nationwide oppression continues unabated.
More than 70 rights activists arrested during anti-junta protests last year were sent to prison, and at least 14 of them were given 65 years behind bars! The junta clearly has no intention of respecting the wishes of its own people, despite the fact that the Charter — which was also signed by the junta — clearly stipulates the need for member states to promote and protect human rights. When a member state does not respect the wishes of the people and even treats them harshly, it is absurd to expect ASEAN will ever become a people-centered organization.
Worse, ASEAN’s silence on the sad developments in Myanmar is deafening. No one seems concerned about the fate of those detained by the junta, let alone raises the issue with the Myanmar government. Instead, ASEAN officials continue to assert, in a triumphant mood that ‘we will be celebrating a new ASEAN’.
Surely with the charter will come some changes, such as the need to create additional units within the ASEAN Secretariat, the appointment of permanent representatives to ASEAN, and the establishment of an ASEAN human rights body. Yet it is not immediately clear how such changes will really turn ASEAN into a new mode; a mode of regional community-building. A regional community requires a common identity, and Southeast Asia is still far from fulfilling that requirement, if such a requirement is ever possible within ASEAN.
Therefore one should not raise expectations unnecessarily. ASEAN, after the Charter, will not be too different from ASEAN before the Charter. It is still a diplomatic association, a loosely organized club of states, seeking to cooperate with each other, primarily in the interest of maintaining good multilateral relations. ASEAN will continue to function as it has been functioning over the last 40 years.
The only difference, if any, is that post-Charter ASEAN will now function by pretending it has become a legally binding entity, despite the fact that rules and principles embodied in the Charter cannot be enforced, and non-compliance by member states will continue to go unpunished.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with such an ASEAN. But the Association needs to stop deceiving itself. It is better to admit there is a limit to what ASEAN can accomplish. By being realistic, ASEAN would be better off.
For Indonesia, despite its decision to ratify the Charter, we need to start thinking seriously beyond ASEAN. We will waste our potential if we continue to treat ASEAN as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. For that, we need new and fresh thinking about an appropriate place for ourselves in the wider Asia Pacific.
The writer is the deputy executive director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.
This article originally appeared in the Jakarta Post, 24 November 2008.
See also:
The ASEAN Charter and remodeling regional architecture
posts by CSIS Indonesia