ASEAN under spotlight during crises

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February 24, 2009 10:04:00
Martin Abbugao
Agence France-Presse

SINGAPORE -- Southeast Asia's regional bloc will come under close scrutiny once more as its leaders meet in Thailand this week for a summit watered down by the absence of big guns China, India and Japan.

Political woes in key member states and a global economic slump are putting new pressure on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to show its relevance despite persistent criticisms it is a talking shop, analysts said.

Host and current ASEAN chair Thailand is struggling against an impending recession, riven by political turmoil and locked in a border dispute with Cambodia, while Malaysia's ruling party is fighting off a resurgent opposition.

Singapore, ASEAN's wealthiest member per capita, is meanwhile facing its worst recession since independence.

Myanmar's junta continues to defy an international outcry to release democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and to carry out democratic reforms.


And months after a US housing problem erupted into the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, ASEAN has yet to come up with a coordinated response, analysts said.

"Within ASEAN, the key challenge is a lack of leadership, which has contributed to fragmentation," said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia specialist at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

"The meeting has no focus, and it is likely not to have one as a result of internal pressures on regimes," she told AFP.

ASEAN officials said a key agenda item for the summit, which runs from Friday until Sunday, will be how the region will deal with the economic crisis.

On Sunday, ASEAN finance ministers and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea agreed to a 120-billion-dollar fund to help regional states cope with financial stress.

ASEAN is to contribute 20 percent while its bigger neighbors would chip in 80 percent, mirroring the lopsided power balance -- although there is no timeframe yet for when it will be operational.

"There's nothing much they (ASEAN states) can do," said Song Seng Wun, a Singapore-based regional economist with CIMB-GK Research.

"The global recession has affected everyone, and to a different degree those with much larger domestic markets will be looking at their domestic economies to cushion the slowdown."

Originally planned as a celebration of a landmark charter that ASEAN hopes will strengthen the 10-nation regional bloc, the summit became a victim of Thailand's political upheaval.

It was deferred from December after protesters opposed to the previous government seized Bangkok's two airports.

Traditional back-to-back meetings with the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, as well as Australia, India and New Zealand were provisionally postponed to April, leaving the meeting an all-ASEAN affair.

The absence of the big powers "takes the momentum out of the summit," Welsh said. Even the international media is scaling down its coverage.

While ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan is working to strengthen the bloc, any changes will be gradual because "the regional political context and economic contractions are not conducive to these ambitions," Welsh said.

ASEAN remains relevant as a discussion forum and to articulate the region's interests opposite bigger countries, she said.

But "expectations of substantive outcomes have usually been unmet and this pattern is likely to continue," she added.

Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, a human rights group, said ASEAN needs to further engage with civil society organizations.

Burma is the former name of Myanmar, where the ruling junta is accused of committing massive human rights abuses.

Activists have expressed fears that an ASEAN human rights body will be powerless to punish rights violators in countries like Myanmar.

"ASEAN will always be a hostage to one or more of its members," Stothard told AFP. "Its effectiveness and relevance is in jeopardy."

Former ASEAN chief Rodolfo Severino defended the grouping, saying it has overcome more serious problems in the past.

ASEAN continues to be the main driver for wider regional engagement and needs to be strengthened, said Severino, who heads the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

"This means that ASEAN has a great responsibility and it should exert greater leadership," he said.

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