ASEAN Rising : What
is in it for the working people of Southeast Asia?
Rene E. Ofreneo
Executive Director, Fair Trade Alliance
Background: In its Summit in Bali, the Heads
of the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) – the original ASEAN 6 (Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) and the new ASEAN
4 (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) -- adopted a historic declaration
called Concord II. In the said Concord, the ASEAN Heads of States
declared that like the European Community, the ASEAN territory shall
be one contiguous ASEAN Community by the year 2020. This borderless
ASEAN Community shall be composed of three communities – the
ASEAN Security Community, the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community and
the ASEAN Economic Community or AEC.
Since then, the vision of a robust and rapidly integrating regional
ASEAN economy has attracted a lot of media mileage, both within
and outside the individual ASEAN countries. Home to over 500 million
people, the ASEAN is seen as the core of an even bigger economic
community – the East Asia Economic Community (EAEC). The EAEC
unite the ASEAN bloc of ten countries with the dragon economies
of Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea and Taiwan. Some
statistics on the potentials of a bigger East Asia grouping have
naturally captured the imagination of economic and political commentators
– two billion East Asian consumer market, a collective GDP
bigger than the United States or EU, and the world’s largest
manufacturing base.
The ASEAN has no clear economic development program:
Outside of the existing narrow liberalization program, (the AFTA
– CEPT Program) ASEAN records do not contain any major studies
and recommendations on complementation of economies, on how those
lagging in development can catch up with the more advanced ones
and how the social dimension, (for example, issues of inequity and
joblessness), can be addressed. There were only some discussions
on brand-to-brand complementation, human resources development (for
example, on mutual recognition or certification of skills) and sharing
of some agricultural technology.
Thus, economic integration is simply seen as one of opening up each
other’s economic borders.
Economic integration is proceeding in an equally narrow
manner, largely in the hands of a few corporate interests:
Transnational corporate interests, have their own regional and global
programs, which are outside the control of the working peoples,
or of the urban and rural masses of the region. In agriculture for
example, one integration instrument is the propagation of GMO/biotechnology,
which is in the hands of agribusiness TNCs, that have managed to
worm their way the policy corridors of the ASEAN
Will this solve unemployment, inequality, poverty and hunger in
the developing countries of the region? Unemployment, inequality,
poverty and hunger are rooted in the unequal distribution of resources
and access to economic opportunities in society. They are also rooted
in the uneven development of the economy, which is partly a legacy
of past colonialism, bad economic advice by neo-liberal economists
and poor global and regional integration.
Under economic liberalization and globalization, the region has
been developing in a very uneven manner. Development has also been
very uneven in the individual ASEAN countries, with some benefiting
from economic integration and many others, not. In some countries,
the number of the excluded constitutes the large majority. Civil
societies in Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand have extensive
documentation on how liberalization and globalization tend to benefit
a few included, mainly the economic partners of transnational corporations
and some skilled professionals like IT programmers.
These processes of globalization and liberalization tend to marginalize
many others -- the short-term employee hires, the small farmers,
communal fisherfolk, small and micro enterprises with no global
linkages, domestic industries producing for the home market, indigenous
peoples who do not comprehend the meaning of tradeables and exportables,
workers displaced by privatization and corporate restructuring,
and many others who have no sustainable jobs or business niches
under globalization and economic liberalization. Such a situation
is not sustainable, politically and economically. Terrorist threat,
insurgency and social unrest breed in the fertile ground of social
inequality and the exclusion of large sectors of the population
from the benefits of growth.
And yet, the ASEAN response to development issues tends to be one-sided
– more and more economic liberalization without any clear
regulatory framework.
The traumatic lessons from the l997-98 Asian financial
crisis have not yet been fully dissected and inputted into the policy-making
processes of the ASEAN: Four ASEAN countries were seriously
hit by the crisis – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines. These countries adopted different approaches to attain
recovery and normalcy, with varying levels of success. It appears
that those with ultra-liberal economic policies inspired by the
IMF-World Bank have fared badly. This is the case of the Philippines
and Indonesia. And yet, there seems to be some silent avoidance
of this issue, for it raises some fundamentals on the basis of a
neo-liberal framework for ASEAN integration.
How can the ASEAN become truly an Economic Community of
the ASEAN majority, meaning the working population? The
ASEAN leadership should re-think development. The issue is how to
make integration balanced, inclusive, equitable and welfare-enhancing
for all. Four decades after, the ASEAN is finally talking of the
need for an ASEAN Charter and the challenge of developing an ASEAN
economic community.
It is time that certain assumptions and approaches on economic
integration be subjected to a more rigorous scrutiny. The First
ASEAN Civil Society Summit in Kuala Lumpur, January 2005, came
up with the following ten demands:
- Share information with civil societies on the proposed ASEAN
Constitution.
- Set up mechanism for engagement with civil societies on regional
concerns.
- Transform ASEAN Parliamentary Caucus into ASEAN Parliament with
peoples’ representation.
- Translate commitments to rights of workers, women, children,
migrants, elderly and refugees into doable instruments.
- Take decisive action on trans-boundary security/environmental
concerns, e.g., haze, bird flu, migration, etc.
- Seek an end to suppression of civil and political rights.
- Ensure that global, regional and bilateral trade talks lead
to justice and equity.
- Reverse unsustainable consumption, production and development
patterns.
- Empower youth, women and indigenous peoples through access to
education, employment and decision-making processes.
- Forge people-centered ‘ASEAN identity’ through better
understanding of history, culture and diversity as well as shared
values of ASEAN peoples.
Answering the ten demands will be a good beginning for ASEAN Leaders
of States, in ensuring that the next four decades of the ASEAN
will truly serve the interests of the working population of the
region.
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