POLITICS-ASIA: Human Rights Has a Chance in Revamped ASEAN

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 14 2005 (IPS) - If pious political intentions are a mark of virtue, then Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi deserves praise for comments made as South-east Asian countries embark on a new chapter in the history of their 10-member regional bloc.

Badawi threw his weight behind the need for the region’s citizens to have a pivotal role in a new charter that would make the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a more cohesive political entity.

The grouping includes Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines and Indonesia.

”For ASEAN to have a truly strong cohesion, it must involve people at all levels,” Badawi told the Malaysian media shortly before government leaders from the region approved the drafting of the new ASEAN charter. ”We need to engage the views from all strata of society … because ASEAN belongs to them, so that they are more concerned about the grouping in the future.”

The approval was granted at this week’s ASEAN summit, held in Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 12-13. The drafting will be done by a group of ”eminent persons,” and when complete, it is expected to take the form of a constitution for the region, with a binding set of principles and values, very much on the lines of the European Union.

Badawi’s comments offer hope that the region’s citizens may witness a genuine break from what ASEAN has come to be since its founding in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Although created with visions of promoting economic and social harmony, it essentially became a cosy club for government leaders notable for their authoritarian and dictatorial stripes.

These leaders got away with a culture of abuse by agreeing on principles such as non-interference on each other’s domestic troubles, avoiding any discussion on politically sensitive issues in the region and by agreeing to make decisions through consensus, rather than defending a universal value.

Even today, these streaks of authoritarianism and dictatorial governance are very much a reality in a majority of ASEAN countries.

Brunei has an absolute monarchy, Vietnam and Laos are ruled by repressive communist parties and Burma has an oppressive military regime.

Singapore is a one-party state with an unelected prime minister and Malaysia itself another quasi-democracy, with a single dominant party, but where, of late, there appears to be more openings for dissent.

And of the four countries where democracy has taken root – Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand – there are two where all is not well. Elected governments in Cambodia and Thailand have turned on their critics since coming to power, driving fear among their respective peoples.

Till talk of the regional charter surfaced, ASEAN watchers had to live with powerful leaders like Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew or the former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad dismissing such universal values as human rights and greater citizens’ participation in the region’s politics as irrelevant.

The way ASEAN handled Rangoon’s military regime after Burma was admitted into this regional bloc in the mid-1990s was typical of such a dominant, government-centred ideology. Little thought was given by the South-east Asian leaders to include Burmese citizens, opposition groups and even that country’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi when trying to press for political reform there. ASEAN was only interested in dialogue with the junta.

In other areas, too, ASEAN governments have displayed signs of being disconnected from the people. And this reality is aptly conveyed in a commentary written in this week’s ‘The Jakarta Post’ by Endy Bayuni. ”While community-building has become very much part of the Asean vocabulary, the annual summit taking place in Kuala Lumpur this week is anything but communal. Instead, the gathering remains as elitist as it has ever been, if not more so.”

Yet both political insiders and activists in the region feel that the ASEAN charter offers some hope of changing the political culture that has dominated the region, given that the ideas of democracy, human rights and transparency may find their way into the final document.

”The ASEAN charter is the first major political step being made in the region and for it to be meaningful, the views of the people are important, particularly what they want it to reflect,” Zaid Ibrahim, a parliamentarian in the Malaysian government and president of an ASEAN inter-parliamentary group lobbying for reform in Burma, told IPS.

Other regional actors have set their sights on two words – human rights – to judge if the new charter would mark a genuine commitment towards change or if, on the contrary, it would be a document that perpetuates the political animal that ASEAN has been for the past 38 years.

”To shut people out like they have always done and not give prominence to human rights would make the new charter meaningless,” Sinapan Samydorai, president of the Think Centre, a Singapore-based non-governmental group that champions freedom of expression and human rights, said in an interview. ”One cannot discount this because ASEAN governments don’t like the words human rights.”

How the regional grouping handles Burma in the coming months could hint at what ASEAN’s nearly 530 million people can expect with the charter due to come out in late 2006. On Monday, ASEAN’s leaders displayed that they do have a stomach for change, by coming down hard on Rangoon’s regime, calling for more accountability and speedy political reform.

For that, credit is being showered on Malaysia. ”Summit host Malaysia should be given a standing ovation for standing up to Burma like no other country has ever dared to do,” stated ‘The Nation’ in an editorial on Tuesday.

Such thinking by the Badawi administration will be hard to ignore when ASEAN’s eminent persons group meets to draft the region’s charter, adds the Thai English-language daily. ”They will be reminded of the necessity of collective action in protecting the interests and lives of ordinary citizens.”