I can not see this being allowed to happen by either China or Japan. Especially, as the Northeast Asians have conditioned the better part (80%) of any country’s CMI activation on the IMF approving a stand-by agreement. Any percentage ‘handed over’ to the ASEAN 5 will be purely symbolic and not effect the underlying ability of Japan and China to block disbursement. Moreover, given the tradition within asian insitutions for consensus decision making, the theshold for approval likely to be set high enough that either China or Japan can block.

The agreement between China and Japan is helpful in progressing the CMI cause and should be congratulated. It is, however, still in the confine of the traditional “power” representation of politics and governance. There is no “breakthrough” in thinking to combine the “representative style” of the IMF voting mechanism and the somewhat more “senate style” voting mechanism of the United Nations. The latter is more reflective of equal rights for every nation, irrespective they are big or small, although it can suffer its own shortcomings.

An alternative to either of those mechanisms is to have a voting mechanism combined both. Half of the votes will be decided by the representative style votes based on economic contributions and the other half by an equal vote of every member. This will give the community more humanitarian flavour and also recognise the economic reality and accountability.

In fact this voting mechanism, if adopted, could be better than or superior to the current parliamentary system of two separate chambers, with the requirement that both have to pass in majority. Indeed, some of the parliamentary dramas in the Australian system where a minority senator can hold the whole parliament and the nation as “hostage” have shown some of the serious shortcomings with that system. Maybe one day they will be reformed.