Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, The Jakarta Post, Cambridge, MA
Throughout the region, and the world, the reaction toward the adoption of the ASEAN Charter at Tuesday's summit in Singapore has been of undue over-enthusiasm, conventional apathy or excessive disappointment.
For officials and academics involved in the process over the past two years, the charter is a culmination of tough negotiations. For ASEAN citizens, the 55 articles are, for now, lifeless rhetoric in a world in where many of their own national laws are neglected.
For naysayers, especially human rights groups, it is further proof of the grouping's failure to uphold democracy and the protection of fundamental human rights. These criticisms, while justified, were born under the rightful mood of disgust over recent events in Myanmar.
Too much focus has been placed on what critics contend to be a tame assertion to human rights protection and the future creation of an toothless ASEAN rights body.
In the end all the self-praise and criticisms are overstated.
The charter, like all great constitutions, is a means to end. It does not contain stringent specificities but at the same time provides the modalities for continued progress that allows for debate and potential oversight in the creation of a ""caring and sharing community"" of democratic nations based on the rule of law.
It is a leap for the 40 year-old grouping. Where it lands -- forwards or backwards -- will depend on mutual commitment to the charter. This new document at least provides ASEAN's 567 million people a legal right to demand respect for democratic values, fundamental human rights and good governance.
Past criticism by fellow member states of rights abuses in Myanmar and the Thai coup has thus far been based on political discretion. The charter now makes it obligatory, in affect, to censure these countries more stringently.
The genesis of the charter is symptomatic of the evolution of ASEAN values itself. The Eminent Persons Group (EPG) in 2005 breathed the region's growing democratic ethics into their charter recommendations.
EPG members like Ali Alatas, Singapore's S. Jayakumar, Malaysia's Tun Musa Hitam and Vietnam's Nguyen Manh Cam, in their past capacities may have balked at the ""impertinence"" of many stated proposals, but in their present stage became catalysts for it being embedded as part of ASEAN's future.
One should not understate the role of the Task Force and certain ministers to ensure these tenets were not watered down in the negotiating process. Kudos to Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda for his diplomatic efforts to stall last minute efforts earlier this year to diminish reference to the rights body.
The charter -- which upholds established precepts of state sovereignty and non-interference -- is not simply old wine placed in a new bottle. It takes the grape seeds which produce the wine and plants them in new pasture causing an osmosis brought about by its new environment.
Hence traditional state tenets are tempered with equally strong tastes of value-based principles previously un-akin to ASEAN.
The EPG also realized that ""ASEAN should have the power to take measures to redress cases of serious breaches of ASEAN's objectives (and) major principles"".
The charter strengthens this intent by requiring member states to enact legislation to implement the stated charter provisions. When breaches to the charter occur, there are now legal grounds for ASEAN leaders to take action which may not necessarily have to be based on consensus.
How and what the recourse is will be the challenging political prerogative that leaders must determine in the future.
At least we, ASEAN citizens and governments, now have the legal tools available. And it will be up to us, the people of Southeast Asia, to demand our respective governments apply these articles faithfully to each other.
The charter thus should be welcomed with optimism and guarded hope instead of cynicism. It is a monumental document which a decade ago would have been almost inconceivable.
But ASEAN's problem has not been one of vision. It is the lack of serious implementation. Without a commitment to guard, foster and care for them, even great monuments fall asunder in the rust of neglect.
The author, a staff writer with The Jakarta Post, is currently a research fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
