Representatives of the five original members of ASEAN – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – line up for a photo during the first meeting of the regional grouping in Bangkok in August 1967. Pic: AFP/Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs

SINGAPORE – The Associa-tion of Southeast Asian Nations should engage its people more to avoid becoming an elitist club, the group’s incoming chief said in a report published last Tuesday.

“It is extremely important that we engage the people of ASEAN,” former Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan said, referring to the 10-nation bloc by its initials in an interview with Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper.

“It should not be just the monopoly or the preserve of the elites, the diplomats, of political leaders, even some journalists and academics doing some research and writing, or even business people,” he said.

Surin, 57, was speaking ahead of the bloc’s 40th founding anniversary last Wednesday. He was formally named as the next ASEAN secretary general at the annual meeting of the group’s foreign ministers in Manila last week.

Critics have said that while ASEAN has helped preserve peace in Southeast Asia over the past four decades, it has failed to make a difference to the daily lives of the region’s citizens because of its elitist nature.

Surin said he aims to change this.

ASEAN’s citizens should develop a sense of identity and belonging instead of thinking as nationals of individual states, said Surin.

“I think ASEAN should be a common aspiration for all peoples of ASEAN and they must feel emotionally attached to ASEAN,” he said.

“We must engage the youth because it is their future. If the youth or younger generation do not identify with or do not care about ASEAN, we have a problem.”

Surin said his top priority would be to develop the region’s human resources.
“The problems of poverty, lack of opportunity, illiteracy, lack of human resource development are the first priorities for all of us because they are the root causes of all other problems that we have in the region,” he said.

ASEAN, founded on August 8, 1967, is a market of 500 million people. It groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, ASEAN could take pride in preventing wars in Southeast Asia but struggles to make a difference to people’s daily lives, analysts said.

ASEAN was founded as a pro-western bloc at the height of the Cold War but its 10 members now include communist-ruled Vietnam and Laos.

It has been praised for laying the foundations for regional economic integration and cooling down geopolitical tensions by hosting an annual Asia-Pacific security forum involving world powers.

“Without ASEAN Southeast Asia would be in a situation similar to what it was in the 1960s – a lot of bilateral tensions,” Hiro Katsumata, an analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP.

At a forum in Singapore last Monday ahead of the anniversary of the group’s founding on August 8, 1967, ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong said: “We maintained the peace in Southeast Asia.”

Because of this, many Southeast Asians have yet to feel the impact of ASEAN in their daily lives beyond the inconvenience of hosting summit meetings, they say.

“It’s a pity but there was one survey in which the people were asked what came to their minds when ASEAN is mentioned, and the number one answer was ‘traffic’,” one Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP.

Kavi Chongkittavorn, assistant group editor of Thailand’s The Nation Group Media, said at the Singapore forum that ASEAN “has always been a top-down organisation” and needs to be “more people-oriented”.

He said Southeast Asian nationals must be made to feel they belong to ASEAN and praised an agreement by ASEAN foreign ministers early this month to assist one another’s citizens caught in conflicts around the world.

An agreement for wider visa-free entry for ASEAN nationals within the region could also have a direct impact, he said.

ASEAN chief Ong admits the group has to do more. “One criticism is that ASEAN is elitist in policy and decision-making. I don’t think anybody can deny that,” he said.

An ASEAN Charter being drafted for signing at the summit in Singapore in November calls for the establishment of a human rights body.

It also gives leaders the option to bypass the principle of consensus – blamed for too many compromises in the past – by calling for a vote when there is a deadlock on key decisions.

At the Singapore forum, a representative from the environmental group Greenpeace took ASEAN to task for its failure to take strong measures to curb illegal logging, money laundering and abuses against migrant workers.

Another delegate urged more engagement with non-government organisations. – AFP