Inklings of a Vision for ASEAN - Part 2 (Governance & Politics)

I will deal with this part in two sections which are actually rather seperate in nature. Governance refers to the administrative organization of public services to deal with policy matters while politics is the political structures (governments and parties alike) and influences that currently exist in the various nations in SEA. I will use Singapore as my reference point on the topic of governence, while obviously all nations need to be considered under the political section.

Currently, Singapore has 2 important inter-ministerial committees for the areas of homeland security(counter-terrorism) and sustainable development. The ideological background behind such committees that cross the various ministries of trade & industry, defence, home affair, national development, health, environment etc. is to enable vertical and horizontal integration when it comes to policy making. In simple terms, it is a recognition that homeland security and sustainable development are unique policy areas that require a multi-dimensional coherent approach to draft policies that will be able to meet multi-dimensional problems. I think SEA-integration requires a similar approach. It cannot be left to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work solely on integration because clearly many other ministries are critically important. Off my head, I can think of Trade & Industry (for obvious trade and economic reasons), Education (in terms of educating the young), Health, National Development (in a possible sharing of expertise, and exchange of best practices), Defence, Home Affairs (under the current counter-terrorism cooperation), Environment & Water resources (under umbrella of sustainable development), Transport (creating infrastructure and links), Finance (possible loan schemes and co-op plans). It really does seem that all ministries need to be involved! So there lies the proposal of governance structure - inter-miniterial committees to work on ASEAN integration throughout the ASEAN states.

Politics. SEA has a plethora of different types of political systems. I will categorize these as the stable democracies, the instable democracies and the communist nations. There is an underlying reason for such a categorization. Going by incidents in the past 20 years, the three most populous nations of Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines can be grouped under instable democracies. The common feature being repetitive change of governments overthrown more often by extra-democratic ways such as coups or 'People Power' revolutions. The 2 clear stable democracies are Malaysia and Singapore which have seen the ruling parties of UMNO & PAP come to power in successive elections ever since their independance. Cambodia can also be considered an immature stable democracy ever since Hun Sen came to power. The communist nations include Vietnam, Burma, Laos. If we were to combine communist nations and stable democracies together, we get a larger grouping of more than 3/4 of the nations in SEA which have seen stable governments. This notion of stable governments does not carry any other notions of transparency, possible repression or human rights. All I mean is that these governments have been in power for a long time, and look like they are going to continue to be in power for yet some more time to come. This offers an opportunity to form un-interrupted political solidarity that governments of Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines will be compelled to be committed to, regardless of which party comes to power. Backed up by stable civil services who are structured and tuned to SEA integration, it is possible that SEA integration can hold firm even among political instability or different political ideologies.

To complete this part of the essay, I will touch on the political instability. It is easy and simple to classify the problems of SEA governments to corruption, repression of human rights and competing interests. However, I think these generalizations besides being helpful in promoting euthopic morale-boosting one-liners of , "Respect Human Rights! Say NO to Corruption!" or "Less Power for the Military" and enhancing the own moral good-feel in those who look down on such nations, are actually quite useless in reality. What are human rights? What is corruption? What is power? The actual meanings on the ground for these terms differ from place to place! The issues are far more complicated than the normal outsider can ever understand or even imagine. So, does this make the situation only more complicated and unsolvable? Am I arguing against human rights and democracy and freedom? No! What I am arguing is that greater political and civil service integration will help improve the understanding of the different political systems, which thereby can strengthen integration and ultimately enable ASEAN to take on an important and mutually respected role in pursuing the very goals of human rights and freedom. UN's weakness is that the various states feel that the other states do not understand their local conditions, and therefore any recommendations or attempts at peace are not taken seriously by governments. A strong ASEAN can only form when the different governments have trust in each other and bother to explain their own national circumstances before being open to criticism and feedback. Noone is going to accept feedback from someone he feels does not understand him at all!

But of course, we must be practical. There must always be a reason for integration : mutual benefits. If that does not exist, there is no reason to cooperate unless under a completely altruistic world which we are not in anyway. In today's world, benefits are only measured under economic terms, i.e GDP. And that is where this essay will turn to next.