Behind the pomp, try to seek out Asean's true nature

All the pomp and ceremony of the 14th Asean Summit aside, people who care about the future of the region have many reasons to be concerned. Some are worried that more trade liberalisation will benefit big businesses while leaving farmers at a severe disadvantage. Others are worried about the lack of transparency in the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the Asean Human Rights body. And some say Burma's generals are using Asean as an effective shield against being accountable for their crimes.

This writer's concern is simply about the Asean Charter itself. Words like human rights, democracy, liberty and people-centred Asean were heavily peppered. But try to look at the ground reality, and then it's hard to keep optimism alive.

Let's start with the fact that the vast majority of "Asean citizens" neither had any meaningful participation in the charter-drafting process nor did they have the opportunity to endorse or reject it through a referendum. This despite the fact that the charter's preamble starts with this very sentence: "We, The Peoples of the Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as represented by the Heads of State or Government of....".

Represented? Reality check: the number of democratically elected government in Asean when the document was signed, which was in November 2007, was far and few. Thailand was then under a junta-appointed prime minister. Forget Burma, cast doubt on Singapore, where elections have often been described as a controlled ritual. Laos and Vietnam remains one-party states and Brunei is absolutely ruled by one man. Malaysia restricts many political rights under its draconian Internal Security Act. That leaves only Indonesia and the Philippines to have some genuine claim to be truly "representative" of its people.

Back to Surin. This writer asked him earlier this week how he can justify being so proud of the charter when no real participation or referendum was allowed.

He did answer but asked that it be put off the record. So much for Asean transparency.

Surin aside, the argument or justification read like this: if the process is open and participatory then it may take decades more to have it done, and God, Allah, Buddha or Shiva forbid, there may even be vote-buying to either endorse or oppose the charter.

The charter is thus a forced marriage of sorts. And to make matters worse, many people aren't even concern about reading it. Perhaps this is mainly due to the very fact that they don't feel an ownership of this "sacred document" as they were not allowed to be involved from the beginning.

At a British Chevening Alumni dinner party earlier this week, seven out of seven Chevening scholars on my table confessed to not having read it. Then two more joined our table and said they had. This writer was delightfully surprised, that is, until he discovered that the two were in fact Surin's staff who came along with the secretary-general, who was the guest speaker that night.

But give Asean credit for some honesty. Nowhere in the whole 55 Articles were the words "press freedom" to be found. As those familiar with Asean will know, the media is either controlled or interfered with by the state in countries like Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and even Thailand to some extent.

So for the charter not to contain the words press freedom might be the most honest and truthful part about the state of Asean and the charter itself.

This writer isn't sure if we should toast Asean leaders for this though.