The ASEAN Charter, the draft of which is now in the House of Representatives for ratification, puts Indonesia in an awkward catch-22 situation.

Here is a document into which the Indonesian government has put so much attention and resources, including lengthy negotiations, to get it signed by all 10 member governments of ASEAN. But the final text has been heavily watered down from its original form, so much so that the original lofty goals of turning the region into one vibrant community with shared values and shared principles are virtually lost.

Instead, what we have is a document that largely reiterates existing ASEAN agreements and arrangements. As good as they were in bringing together ASEAN countries in the past, the charter could hardly be expected to advance the single community idea.

The charter is a betrayal of a grand vision set by ASEAN's own eminent persons who have laid down the values and principles in their bold and visionary report for an ASEAN community.

This leads us to question whether or not Indonesia, or in this case the House of Representatives, should ratify the ASEAN Charter. It is a question that the Indonesian people, through their elected representatives in the House, have to answer.

Having proposed it to the House, the government's position is already clear: to ratify it. But the House, particularly Commission I on foreign affairs which deliberates the ratification process, does not have to follow the official line.

With all due respect to friends at Jl. Pejambon, who have worked tirelessly to negotiate the charter's text and defend Indonesia's strategic interests in this regional organization, we beg to differ with the Foreign Ministry on this issue.

To ratify would be to sell out on the values and principles Indonesia stands for, including democracy, freedom and human rights -- values and principles that are universal and acknowledged by the ASEAN eminent persons group.

In the absence of these values and principles, one can see that Myanmar, which has just ratified the charter, will continue to repress their people, and pro-democracy leader and Nobel peace laureate Ang San Suu Kyi will continue to linger in jail.

In the absence of these values, many people living in ASEAN countries, and not just Myanmar, will continue to live without their civic rights being observed or protected by their own governments.

Perhaps it would have been too much to ask other ASEAN countries to amend their political systems. ASEAN's 10 members include an absolute monarchy, a military junta-led state, some one-party states, and some liberal and illiberal democracies. While it is not the business of any ASEAN government to push for regime changes in the region, it should not stop Indonesia from insisting on these values and principles being observed within ASEAN, thus written into the charter, if we seriously want to build ourselves a respected community.

A ratification would be a trap for Indonesia, which, because of the sheer size, is seen as the natural leader of ASEAN. Having invested so much in ASEAN, Indonesia would now be beholden by the other members who really need to get their acts together.

One of the problems with the charter is the decision to retain the consensus mechanism for making decisions. This means, as Abdillah Toha, a member of Commission I said in a statement to The Jakarta Post this week, "a country with three or four million people could dictate a country with more than 200 million".

Being a leader of the group making decisions based on consensus has served Indonesia's foreign policy well in the past, but the charter is putting ASEAN in a completely different ball game. The consensus mechanism can no longer be defended if we want to turn ASEAN into a community. The last thing Indonesia wants is to become the leader of a dysfunctional community.

The House of Representatives, in whose hands the fate of the ASEAN Charter now rests, faces two choices.

It could ratify the document with a lot of reservations, including telling Pejambon pointedly to invest less on ASEAN, and reallocate its resources on other more worthy projects. ASEAN is increasingly becoming a straitjacket for Indonesia in pursuing its foreign policy objectives that we should rethink its usefulness in view of recent developments in the region.

The alternative is to reject the ratification, send the text back to the drawing board and insist on a greater commitment from other members to seriously work towards the goal of a genuine single community.

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