Report Card for the 21st ASEAN Summit

The ASEAN Summit was concluded almost a month ago. I had wanted to provide a report card of the summit but was delayed until now. As I see it, there were about four main takeaways, each capable of generating endless debate as to whether it is a good or bad thing.

First in the list is the signing of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. For many people, it is indeed an achievement considering that the organization did not come into being with the idea of pushing for human rights. In fact, some would even argue that many of the founders of ASEAN were hardly democratically elected. Yet, some would say that the declaration fell short of expectations as many “standard” norms appear to have been excluded.

Second is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). As with other recent summits, ASEAN Leaders pledged their continuous commitment to the establishment of AEC in 2015 but implementation process has been hit with several problems. The decision to delay AEC from 1 Jan 2015 to 31 Dec 2015 further proves this point. Officials can argue that AEC will still come into existence in 2015 but seriously, it is not hard to see that it has effectively been delayed by one year and how that will further affect ASEAN’s credibility remain to be seen.

Third is the announcement of the start of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiation. On one hand, it gives the impression that ASEAN is serious in pursuing further economic integration with its neighbours but on the other hand, people are questioning whether anything tangible will come out of this considering the proposed timeline of its conclusion, 2015. One, it essentially clashes with AEC and if you cannot even implement one thing with your existing resources, what can you possibly achieve when you need to divide the same resources to handle two things concurrently. Two, there is a potential impact of South China Sea issue on the negotiation process.

This brings us quite nicely to the fourth and last takeaway, which is the South China Sea issue itself. Unlike the above takeaways where something positive can be distilled from them, I frankly do not see anything positive in this issue. It has wrecked ASEAN unity. It has resulted in several incidents that are likely to increase tensions. It has kick-started some military maneuvers and God knows what will come next.

To conclude, this is not a perfect report card but this is not a bad one either. There are certainly troubles brewing but if the relevant stakeholders can just take one step back and look at the bigger picture, I believe ASEAN can right the wrongs and still come out blazing.

P.S: I survive the end of the world.