POLITICS: ASEAN Summit Hit by Typhoon – and More

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 11 2006 (IPS) - If South-east Asian civil society groups needed proof to demonstrate that they are made of sterner stuff than the region’s political leaders, they got it courtesy a typhoon that forced the cancellation of Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Philippines.

The eleventh hour cancellation of the 12th ASEAN summit by the host nation due to the threat of ‘Typhoon Utor’ hitting the island of Cebu, where the summit was to be held Dec. 11-13, becomes more glaring given what the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have achieved.

On Monday, some 300 members of NGOs from across the 10 ASEAN countries and beyond were into the second day of the four-day ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC) in Cebu, an island 600 km south of Manila, where workshops on human rights, peace, poverty and labour rights proceeded as scheduled.

ASEAN groups Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Lao, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Singapore.

‘’The move to call off the ASEAN summit is damaging. It raises questions about how committed the heads of government are to the premier meeting in this region,” Debbie Stothard, a leading campaigner at the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN), a regional rights watchdog, said in a telephone interview from Cebu. ‘’It doesn’t do anything good for ASEAN’s image.”

‘’Postponement of the ASEAN Summit underscore politicians focus on political survival rather then people’s survival,” added the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), a coalition of NGOs from over 100 countries, in a statement released from Cebu. It is one of the groups organising discussions on poverty in this region at the ACSC.

By the weekend, after announcing the new dates for the summit, Jan. 10-13, Manila continued to defend the preventive measures it took. ‘’We still feel that we made the right decision in considering the safety of the delegates,” Marciano Paynor, head of the summit’s organising committee, was quoted as having said in Monday’s ‘Philippines Daily Inquirer.’

The trail of destruction left by Typhoon Utor, where three people died, four have been reported missing, and close to 90,000 evacuated, was far milder than what had happened in the Philippines a week before when the powerful Typhoon Durian struck the archipelago. Durian’s force resulted in huge mudslides that engulfed many villages, resulting in over 1,000 dead or missing.

But media reports from the Philippines have hinted at other factors – besides a concern to avoid a repetition of Durian – that compelled Manila to pull the rug from under the plans for the regional summit. Some said it was the result of warnings issued by Western governments of a possible attack by Muslim militants during the summit. Others attributed it to Manila taking evasive action to prevent possible anti-government street protest in Cebu, given Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s growing unpopularity.

The cancellation of the summit, moreover, comes at time the when ASEAN’s leaders are being faulted by NGO’s of being removed from concerns that matter to the region’s 550 million people and the group’s desperate bid to reinvent itself as a bloc of significance on the global stage.

The wide gulf between the way South-east Asian leaders perceive their region and the reality on the streets of ASEAN’s 10 members was brought home to some activists by the theme that had been chosen by Arroyo for the just postponed summit – ‘’One Caring and Sharing Community.”

‘’It is quite laughable, such a theme. This exposes the sham in process,” Lidy Nacpil, international coordinator for Jubilee South, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) championing the cause of the world’s poor, said during a telephone interview from Manila. ‘’This region is known for its governments having dismal records as democracies and where repression is tolerated.”

In the Philippines, for instance, over 760 people, ranging from Catholic priests, left-wing activists and grassroots activists to journalists, have been killed by para-military groups since Arroyo began her stint as president in January 2001. What alarms human rights advocates is that such violence, sustained as a result of a culture of impunity, is taking place in one of two countries held up as a hope for democracy in the region.

Besides the human rights record in the region, violations include the way refugees and those escaping conflicts at home are treated and the way undocumented migrant workers are viewed – as breaking the law than moving from one ASEAN country to another in search of a job.

‘’Fundamentally, the idea of an ASEAN community is one of hype and aspiration by the governments,” adds Stothard of ALTSEAN. ‘’It has not been felt on the ground. The discriminating way governments treat people of neighbouring countries is a glaring indictment.”

She drew attention to the way the regions governments had for decades cold shouldered the people of Burma, who have endured multiple hardships and suppression due to the iron grip of that country’s ruling military regime. ‘’ASEAN is far from the community it aspires to be because its leaders want to maintain the status quo as a club of governments and not an association of nations.”

Besides the Philippines and Burma, this bloc includes Laos and Vietnam, the communist party-ruled twins, Brunei, ruled by an absolute monarch, and Thailand, under the hold of a military junta following the Sep. 19 coup. While Cambodia is increasingly becoming a country with a one-party state, Singapore and Malaysia have been in that league for years, where democracy has been sacrificed in the interest of national security.

Even Indonesia, the region’s largest member, and one seen by some analysts as taking the correct steps towards democracy after three decades of a brutal dictatorship, has a mixed record of involving the public and civil society groups in shaping an ASEAN agenda that the people can identify with.

‘’The Indonesian government has not sought the public’s views about the ASEAN Charter,” Nadia Hadad, campaigner for the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID), told IPS during a telephone interview from Jakarta. ‘’On ASEAN matters, the government does not appear to be of people on the ground.”

The ASEAN Charter has been billed as an attempt to convert this 39-year-old regional bloc from an entity that relied on consensus and non-binding agreements to one that will become a formal, rules-based alliance. The plans for the ASEAN Charter emerged at last year’s ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, followed by the appointment of distinguished figures from the region to prepare the initial document after a process of discussion.

But the postponement of the Cebu meeting means that the region will have to wait till the rescheduled ASEAN summit to move such plans of integration forward. It is a delay that has not been lost on the region’s activists.

It affirms the ASEAN leaders continued reliance on government cooperation as a measure of regional integration than opening the space and removing the hurdles for public interaction and involvement, says Stothard. ‘’This region is so diverse with many communities and these people have been left out of the picture even as governments make plans about integration. Ultimately, it is the people who will judge what it means.”