Asean – an alphabet soup with a dash of numbers

August 14, 2009
Zainon Ahmad

GO TO any seminar, conference, forum or roundtable on Asean and you would never fail to be surprised by the diverse views expressed by the panelists, be they civil servants, scholars, economists, bankers or businessmen.

One would have thought that after 40 years there would be more consensus that Asean is making progress and helping modern Southeast Asia to stay together even though one is hardly surprised that it has yet to respond meaningfully to the current global economic crisis.

But, of course, the civil servants involved in the so-called “Asean process” would protest quite vehemently at any suggestion that the regional body is moribund. To them, any slight movement forward, however small or infinitesimal, would be hailed as progress. They have to.

In that sense, the roundtable on Wednesday on “East Asia Community Building: The Role of Asean”, organised by the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR) and the Malaysian International Affairs Forum (MIAF), is no different from past confabs on the subject in its various permutations.

Some participants said Asean should be strengthened, others called for more efforts at integration while there were also those who called for the regional body in its present form to be allowed to die.

This last group pointed to the thinking among some sections of the Indonesian elite that Asean was holding up the economic progress of their country which is often thought of and acknowledged as the big brother and leader of the regional grouping.

The rakyat, of course, have despaired over trying to understand what Asean is all about; they are familiar with the acronym but are unsure what the regional body does, the issues it is handling and where it fits into the general scheme of things global.

They are probably as perplexed as Omar Khayyam when he said: “Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctors and saints and heard great arguments about it and about: but evermore came out the same door as in I went.”

Thus former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in his speech when opening the roundtable, called for the need to expedite the formation of a version of Chatham House in London or the Council of Foreign Relations in New York to explain, research and discuss international issues.

He said Malaysians should be “fully aware of external factors which can equally determine the success or failure” of the nation and attain national consensus on international issues.

As it is now, there are probably Malaysians who do not know that Asean stands for Association of South East Asian Nations formed in 1967.

Some, probably confused by the numerous abbreviations and acronyms, think it is an alphabet soup of nomenclatures used by officials and academics tracking the activities of the regional body.

Among the main ones are TAC, AC, AMM, AEM and AFTA representing the Asean Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which the US acceded to last month, Asean Charter, which gives a legal framework to the grouping, Asean Ministerial Meeting – meeting of foreign ministers actually, Asean Economic Ministers Meeting and Asean Free Trade Agreement.

The leaders of these 10 nations must have exulted with pride that the mighty US had condescended to be the 16th non-Asean signee of the TAC which, of course, was the sole superpower’s way of saying “we are back” in the region.

Those uninitiated in the Asean nomenclature would find it hard to guess what BIMPST and CLMV stand for. The first refers to early comers Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand and the second refers to latecomers Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. There are reasons for the separate groupings.

Of course, there are legions more combinations of letters, which Asean officials have referred to as building blocks, including one that represents an AA (Asean accord) on THP (for transboundary haze pollution) and, as can be seen, which does not seem to do much to lessen the annual haze – a polite term for smog.To this soup of alphabets has been added lately a dash of numbers, causing quite an upset to those who feel that Asean should be a wholesome and strong brew first, one that has character and identity before it ventures to expand further.

Thus, there is now an Asean + 3 which those who could not be weaned away from alphabets have referred to as APT (Asean plus three), a ghost of the EAEC that former PM Tun Mahathir Mohamad was trying to sell. The three (3), of course, refers to China, South Korea and Japan.

The regularity of consultations among members of the APT have somehow inspired those who dared to dream to come up with the idea of an East Asian Community. If there is an EC (a European Community) why not an EAC, they reasoned to their leaders.

But Australia, New Zealand and India also wanted to join and to accommodate them in a forum called the East Asian Summit or EAS or a summit of Asean + 3 + 3 was created in 2005 during Abdullah’s watch.

This explains why he was invited to inaugurate the one-day rountable.