Can Cambodia match Indonesia’s good job at ASEAN’s helm?

Mustaqim Adamrah,
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 11/23/2011

Experts are praising Indonesia’s leadership of ASEAN this year while voicing concerns that incoming chair Cambodia may not do as well and may not use the office neutrally to resolve its border disputes with Thailand.

University of Indonesia international relations expert Syamsul Hadi said on Tuesday that granting ASEAN’s rotating chair to Myanmar in 2014 would have political implications for the region, and particularly for China.

“ASEAN has entrusted Myanmar to chair ASEAN in 2014, but has given it notice that it has to undertake needed steps toward democracy. This is also in line with US strategy,” he said.

Syamsul said that Myanmar might be a more open country and may not entirely be on the same page with China if it carried out its democracy agenda.

“There will be a change in the political constellation, where the US and democratic countries in ASEAN might make China feel more ‘alienated’. China’s political influence might be less and less because Myanmar has now increasingly been welcomed with open arms by ASEAN and its dependency on China is more or less declining,” Hadi said.

Dewi Fortuna Anwar, the chairwoman of the Habibie Center’s Institute for Democracy and Human Rights and a special advisor to Vice President Boediono, said US support of Myanmar’s bid should be seen as a vote of confidence in ASEAN and not a lowering of American standards.

“It’s not just the US giving a blank check to Myanmar. [US President Barack] Obama wants to see even more progress … Obama’s even sending his secretary of state to Myanmar,” she said.

Obama previously said the US was concerned about Myanmar’s closed political system, treatment of minorities, detention of political prisoners and relationship with North Korea.

“We want to seize what might be a historic opportunity for progress, and make it clear that if Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America,” Obama said on Friday on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Nusa Dua, Bali.

Hillary Clinton will be the first US secretary of state to go to Myanmar in over half a century. Clinton will explore what kinds of assistance the US can provide to promote political reform in Myanmar.

Teuku Rezasyah, a researcher at the Indonesian Center of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense, said that ASEAN had proven itself to be “bonafide, credible and acceptable to the West” during its chairmanship.

“ASEAN has successfully made the US think over whether they want to continue criticizing Myanmar and push it even closer to China [...] or invite Myanmar to learn together with ASEAN how to be a modern democratic country,” he told The Jakarta Post.

Indonesia symbolically handed ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship to Cambodia last week in Bali.

Rezasyah, however, was concerned that Cambodia would not be neutral in heading ASEAN due to the nation’s border disputes with Thailand.

“It will probably be hard for Cambodia not to use its chairmanship and to act as a fair chairman in border disputes with Thailand,” Rezasyah said.

Syamsul agreed, saying Cambodia might use ASEAN’s bully pulpit to press Thailand, which has refused to bring its disputes to ASEAN due to its superior position in a bilateral framework.

“As ASEAN has a number of different functions, it’s the responsibility of members who have more capacity to help members who have less capacity,” Dewi said.