New Straits Times
Oct 2, 2017
This year, ASEAN celebrates its golden anniversary. It was fitting, therefore, for Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to dedicate this topic to the second of its Chancellor Tuanku Muhriz Lecture Series this week: “Good governance: Challenge for the ASEAN Community”.
The lecture series offers a platform for luminaries to offer insights into good governance to transform people’s lives.
How ASEAN responds to the forces within and without constitutes the governance that can be decisive to its future success.
Professor Tan Sri Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali, the vice-chancellor, in his citation, had this to say of the speaker: “No one is better suited to deliver the lecture than the person who had helped shape the ASEAN of today — Tan Sri Dr Surin Pitsuwan, former Thai foreign minister and the 12th secretary-general of ASEAN.”
An editorial in the Dec 28, 2002 edition of the Jakarta Post hailed Surin as the most effective of the 12 secretaries-general in the grouping’s history.
Surin offered his first-hand view of governance in ASEAN. The Bangkok Declaration that launched ASEAN envisioned the group as bringing peace and prosperity to its people.
True enough, ASEAN is a largely prosperous region and an envy of the world. Yet, inequality across ASEAN and within member-states persists.
Centralized bureaucracies have, albeit unintentionally, impeded the even spread of wealth across society.
The marginalized population in each member-state has become increasingly restive for a larger stake in the fruits of development.
Its export-oriented model of development — on the back of cheap labour, abundant resources and imported technology and capital — has made Asean a major economic powerhouse in Asia and a driver of global growth.
However, that might not be able to transport ASEAN to where it wants to be in the future — a highly-esteemed economic community that is built on meritocracy, social justice and equality of opportunity.
A community of nations requires decisions taken collectively to be executed with diligence in the member countries.
That seems not to be so in ASEAN.
Regional stability has subscribed to ASEAN’s development. The Rohingya problem, which, if unchecked, could materialize into ethnic cleansing, and extremism, now threatens to undermine this stability.
It is pointless to live in a community while isolating oneself from it.
Living as a community means to be appraised of and to act jointly on the troubles in any of its member states.
This is all the more imperative should domestic problems destabilise regional peace and security.
As Edmund Burke, an Irish political philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to say nothing.”
In saluting Malaysia’s stand on the Rohingya issue, Surin painted the horrifying specter of the dispossessed or the extremists commandeering the most congested waterway of the world — the Straits of Malacca.
They could well turn it into a pirates’ haven in the likes of coastal waters off Somalia and east Africa.
The putative collective voice on the internal turmoil of its members that Surin had championed remains as elusive as ever.
These developments are the antithesis of the forces that have buttressed ASEAN’s prosperity and stability.
Surin suggests that ASEAN should go back to basics — to the aspirations of its founding fathers. He offers ASEAN four important reforms to strengthen its governance so that it can motor ahead with gusto and at the same speed it has travelled since its inception.
First, to prevent social tensions, ASEAN should narrow the income gap in member states and the region. As Abraham Lincoln once cautioned: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
A more decentralized bureaucracy, meritocracy and equitable access to education can ensure that wealth and prosperity are more reasonably distributed.
Accountability, transparency, integrity and inclusiveness must be ASEAN’s strong suit.
Such an environment will offer an inspiring future and nurture possibilities for the younger generation.
This will enable ASEAN to accord space and voice to all communities, especially the marginalized.
Monitoring progress towards this ideal will offer the checks and balances to stay the course.
Second, for ASEAN to continue to record stellar growth, it must shift from mere export orientation to investing heavily in education, and research and development.
Excellence in R&D is where universities can deliver a positive impact on the community and the region.
The alchemy of an educated workforce, science and technology advancement and innovation should constitute the engineof ASEAN’s economic development.
Third, ASEAN will have to ensure that individual national interests are subordinated to the association’s larger interests.
Advancing ASEAN’s interest requires political will in the region.
Fourth, ASEAN as a group has great power. With that power comes a great responsibility to speak with one voice on issues afflicting the grouping, as well as its l members.
In the community spirit, ASEAN should tweak its principle of non-intervention with the doctrine of “flexible engagement”.
ASEAN should be more assertive in countering any infringement of good governance in its member nations.
For example, private expressions of support for Malaysia’s categorical and humane stand on the Rohingya crisis will not pass muster in prodding Myanmar to act aggressively to quell the disaster.
ASEAN should capitalie on these changes. As William Shakespeare said in his play, Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And, we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
*Datuk Dr. John Antony Xavier is a principal fellow at the Graduate School of Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (john@ukm.edu.my). (https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2017/10/286448/asean-must-return-basics)
