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he Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) just celebrated its 44th anniversary on Aug. 8 in ASEAN’s capital of Jakarta with festivities, attended by numerous diplomats, while President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono gave a lecture.

But despite its mission to become more people-centered in its development agenda, many citizens within ASEAN countries say they know little about ASEAN, or say they do not feel the presence of ASEAN.

“ASEAN? Is it useful for Indonesia, except [for getting] free visas?” 29-year-old Putie Andriani, an employee at French upstream oil and gas company, Total E&P Indonesie, told The Jakarta Post recently, when asked what ASEAN’s 44th anniversary meant to her.

An engineer with United States-based upstream oil and gas company Chevron, Marthin Winner Adhyaksa Simanjuntak, says that for him, ASEAN has lost its popularity since the New Order regime ended in 1998.

A journalist from the Philippines, Amita Legaspi, says most Filipinos know ASEAN only through textbooks and subjects in school.

“It is not really a ‘working’ or an active organization in the Philippines. When Filipinos talk about ASEAN, it is really an academic discussion,” she told the Post. She also said most of the Philippines’ citizens do not feel the “presence” of ASEAN in the archipelagic country.

Despite a lack of information about ASEAN among the region’s people, Vietnamese Pam Cam Nhung cited the benefits of belonging to ASEAN, including an ASEAN fellowship she was recently awarded, which has proved favorable in her career as a journalist. “The older ASEAN becomes, the more beneficial it is to us,” the journalist from Vietnam Television (VTV) told the Post. “It’s apparent that Vietnam is deriving a great deal since joining ASEAN: more trade, cheaper and easier traveling.”

The bloc is trying to become more people-centered by engaging people in the region in ASEAN’s development agenda and decision making, while at the same time trying to dispel the image that ASEAN is only there to cater for elites. Foreign Ministry director general for ASEAN cooperation, Djauhari Oratmangun, said the wide coverage given to ASEAN in the newspaper Pos Kota proves that ASEAN reaches to the grassroots.

Pos Kota is a local newspaper that is widely read by middle and low-income households. Indonesia has also assigned young ambassadors to publicize ASEAN more widely, at least among its citizens. Indonesia is the only country in ASEAN to hold competitions to select these young ASEAN ambassadors annually.

But given these testimonies, University of Indonesia international relations expert, Syamsul Hadi, said ASEAN countries have to admit that ASEAN is an elite organization, whose decisions are made by elites, not by the people. He also highlighted that none of the candidates running for the presidency in 2009 mentioned anything about ASEAN during their campaign.

“The establishment of ASEAN was triggered by external factors, not internal ones; namely, the concern that Europe was the only regional economic bloc … and the desire to create peace in Southeast Asia,” he told the Post on Thursday.