By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 15 2007 (IPS)

It is in the kitchens and sculleries of South-east Asia’s affluent homes that the new constitution of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc will be tested.

”I have heard about ASEAN but don’t know what it means,” says Ing, who comes from Burma’s Shan state and is employed as a domestic worker in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai. ‘’I don’t feel like I belong to an ASEAN community.”

Her comment, as the 12th ASEAN summit concluded Monday in the Philippines, represents one of the many challenges that the 40-year-old regional grouping faces as it aims to achieve a new image as a rules-based bloc on the lines of the European Union.

The new constitution which is expected to give the group more teeth and a stronger identity will be unveiled at a summit in Singapore later in the year. A number of women who toil as domestic help in the more affluent ASEAN countries are migrant workers like 26-year-old Ing.

ASEAN has in its ranks Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. But they are separated by vast gaps in levels of affluence, ranging from Singapore, with its first world living standards, to poverty-stricken Laos. Politically, democratic Indonesia contrasts with countries like Burma which are run by repressive regimes.

‘’Migrant workers should also be able to enjoy all the benefits of the new ASEAN identity,” Sinapan Samydorai, convenor of the Task Force on ASEAN Migrant Workers, said during a telephone interview from Singapore. ‘’They have to be treated with dignity as equals in the region, with a recognition of their labour rights.”

Dire economic conditions have forced over one million workers from Burma to seek work in Thailand. Besides domestic work, they labour in other areas of the Thai economy, such as agriculture, the fishing industry and construction, which reports say have helped to boost Thailand’s growth.

An estimated three million other migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have also crossed borders into more affluent places like Malaysia and Singapore in search of employment. Labour rights activists say that these workers are treated with little respect and their rights violated despite being members of the ASEAN community.

Other rights victims in the region, such as Burma’s political prisoners, also fFigure in the ASEAN make-over, since the 48-page blueprint that guides the ASEAN constitution drafting process emphasises strengthening of areas like democracy.

The blueprint, which was presented at the Philippines summit as a list of recommendations by a 10-member group of respected elder statesmen, calls for: ‘’Promotion of ASEANs peace and stability through the active strengthening of democratic values, good governance, rejection of unconstitutional and undemocratic change of government.”

It also calls for ‘’the rule of law, including international and humanitarian law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

How far Burma will budge in the wake of such suggestions is the question that ASEAN politicians are asking. There is consensus that freedom for the region’s only Nobel laureate, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, is paramount if the grouping is to live by the words of the new constitution.

Suu Kyi, who has spent over 11 years as a political detainee, is the best known political prisoner in Burma, which currently has over 1,100 political activists in jail. The long list of oppressions attributed to Burma’s military regime has made some ASEAN countries increasingly frustrated because it damages the bloc’s image.

‘’Detaining Suu Kyi and the other political activists will hurt ASEAN as a body if things remain the same after the new charter,” Zaid Ibrahim, Malaysian parliamentarian and head of the ASEAN inter-parliamentary caucus on democracy in Burma, told IPS from Kuala Lumpur. ‘’This is fundamental, because it is a symptom of a bigger problem.”

He argues that the new ASEAN political identity to be unveiled in Singapore would depend on ‘’how much these countries are prepared to change from their past. Old habits are difficult to discard.”

For civil society groups, the new regionalism will face its biggest test in its acceptance and endorsement by the region’s 550 million people. ‘’If the governments want the charter to be meaningful to the people they should have wide-ranging consultations with the public this year and national referenda,” Joy Chavez, senior associate of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank, told IPS.

Through 2006, when the recommendations for the charter were being drafted, there was no public participation. ‘’It is the ASEAN civil society groups that have been trying to popularise the idea of an ASEAN identity through the charter more than the governments,” she added. ‘’The people have a right to know what their leaders are signing away.”

At least on paper, ASEAN leaders who accepted the recommendations for the charter have backed the call to engage with the people. ‘’ASEAN needs to shed its image of being an elitist organisation comprising exclusively of diplomats and government officials,” states the recommendations for the new constitution. ‘'(It has to) promote an ASEAN identity through à empowering the lives of people and communities and engagement with civil society.”

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