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ASEAN told not to forget its people at ‘golden’ fete
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Floral attraction: The Jakarta-based ASEAN Secretariat takes part in the Tomohon International Flower Festival (TIFF) 2017 in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, on Tuesday. The annual event aims to attract more tourists to the region and improve the local economy. (JP/Eva Aruperes)
T
he gesture was grand, the festivities vibrant and the mood among the dignitaries was clearly buoyant. More importantly, at 50 years old, ASEAN managed to show the world that it was indeed united and that the past week of diplomatic back flips did not take away from its legacy.
ASEAN managed to stay intact over the past seven days by leveraging what its critics say was one of the bloc’s weaknesses: the three Cs of consensus, cooperation and consultation.
On Friday evening after their welcome dinner, ASEAN foreign ministers gathered for an informal huddle, which Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi argued had positively affected the group thereafter.
Philippine Foreign Minister Alan Peter Cateyano reminisced about the crucial moment on stage: “We agreed to disagree. It was a night of passionate fighting for national interest and for our own views of how ASEAN should proceed, but in the end we agreed to digest the arguments and to sleep on it.”
“The next day, instead of hav- ing the traditional retreat, we had lunch together, [...] just us foreign ministers, and we found the ASEAN way of coming up with the consensus,” Cateyano told the audience at the grand celebration of ASEAN’s 50th anniversary on Tuesday. And so it was worth celebrating. The Philippines, as chair of the 10-nation bloc this year, held the commemorative event on Tuesday. It was attended by top diplomats and by various ASEAN luminaries, unsung heroes and special guests who bore testament to the pioneering spirit of the group’s founding fathers.
That morning’s festivities at the Philippine International Convention Center in Manila paid tribute to the ASEAN people, a gesture so often forgotten in the organization’s ceremonial proceedings.
The stage was set not just for bureaucrats and statesmen, but also for inspiring individuals from across the region, whether it be ASEAN’s biodiversity heroes, the Rice Science and Technology Ambassadors, or the 2017 ASEAN Youth Social Entrepreneurs award recipients.
