Many regions have already made and fostered alliances, blocks, groups or coalitions as a trend of the modern world, because of the need for safety, surety and peace in order to handle troubles created by greed, or the race for power fueled by shrinking natural resources.
Asia, the largest continent, has tremendous natural resources, is densely populated, but the countries located in this region are mainly classified as developing or underdeveloped countries. Despite the abundance of natural resources, Asian countries are still the object of injustice, unfair treatment and mockery by the main powers from other continents. As an effect of the increasing awareness of always being the object of the game, the Asian parliaments have formed an alliance called the Asian Parliamentary Assembly. This idea of Asian integration provided us “Asians” with a visionary outlook, with a concept to reshape Asia as a political, economic, social and cultural entity.
The secretary-general of the APA, Nejad Hosseinian, at the fourth Asian Parliamentary Assembly plenary meeting in Bandung Dec. 7-10, said “parliaments, as nongovernmental organizations, directly shape governmental policies through the power of the purse, monitor and question government policies, adjust or shift government policies or strategies for policy implementation”.
The APA has addressed globalization by strengthening national policies and harmonizing the Asian approach toward the negative impacts created by globalization. The APA has created active networking among governmental and nongovernmental institutions in dealing with globalization by formulating a common understanding and common strategy.
In order to streamline the APA’s field of work, this body regulated to reduce the number of standing committees to three: the standing committee on political affairs; the standing committee on social and cultural affairs; and the standing committee on economic affairs.
The Bandung meeting resulted in several important decisions, among which was the signing of the Bandung Declaration on Dec. 10 2009. The Declaration consists of 15 articles and was signed by all participant member countries.
The articles addressed several issues, such as strengthening democracy; promoting human rights and peaceful settlement of conflicts; protesting against the intolerance in Switzerland; handling climate change; sustainable development policies among Asian member countries; and corruption.
The declaration also recognizes terrorism as a serious threat to peace; recognizes all people’s right to self-determination; calls upon the United Nations and democracy-promoting states for the establishment and self-determination of the state of Palestine; and supports all nations to live in peace and prosperity and benefit from high technology, including developing nuclear programs for peaceful purposes.
The other results include four resolutions on economics and sustainable development such as a resolution on the integrated energy market; a resolution on alleviating poverty; a resolution on environmental issues, global warming and climate change; one resolution on political affairs which is a resolution on the violation of human right in Palestine and the war crimes committed by Israel; four resolutions on social and cultural affairs such as combating corruption, on the challenges and opportunities of globalization in Asia; protecting and respecting cultural diversity; and achieving health equity.
The most important part of the meeting was actually how well all the parliaments believed, were concerned and committed to creating laws and regulations in line with the visionary objectives of the APA and also to influencing respective executives or governments to exercise the policies accordingly. The target of prosperity, peace and justice were met and for the sake of preserving the world and protecting our grandchildren’s future destiny.
Sulistyo Pudjo H.
Bandung
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|