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Charter to create a new ASEAN: Official
The ASEAN Charter, which goes into force next month, will turn the regional bloc into a new ASEAN, an official at the group's secretariat said recently
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The ASEAN Charter, which goes into force next month, will turn the regional bloc into a new ASEAN, an official at the group's secretariat said recently.
"In term of goals, framework and institution, it will be new," Termsak Chalermpalanupap, special assistant to the ASEAN secretary-general, told a workshop early this week.
With the deposit of instruments of ratification by the Philippines on Nov. 12, Indonesia on Nov. 13 and Thailand on Nov. 14 at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, the lengthy and complicated process to ratify the charter was over, he said.
"So we will be celebrating a new ASEAN," Chalermpalanupap added.
The charter, he went on, would turn ASEAN into a rules-based and people-oriented organization.
It will also help improve the group's operational capabilities, and would see ASEAN and its East Asian peers send special representatives to the ASEAN Secretariat.
"Each country will send a permanent representative, in the same way we send permanent representatives to the UN in New York, or to the UN in Geneva," he said, adding the charter also required leaders of member states to work harder than before.
With the charter, he said, all shareholders and civil society and business groups in ASEAN would be systematically engaged, while conflict resolution among member states would be improved.
He added even the much criticized noninterference principal would be made more balanced with the charter as stipulated in Article 2 point 2 (b) of the document.
Under the article, ASEAN and its member states must act in accordance with the principal of shared commitment and collective responsibility in enhancing regional peace, security and prosperity.
"We are now changing into a new mode, into community building," he said.
As such, he added, ASEAN had to set up something concrete, including building a common single market, establishing a regional production base, and narrowing the development gap between member states.
"These are very concrete goals that require massive resources. But ASEAN is still not capable of mobilizing resources," he said.
For 40 years, Chalermpalanupap went on, ASEAN existed without problems, without seriously considering resource mobilization, because most of what it did in the past was hold meetings.
"We came, we talked, we sang, and we went home. Next year we came again. Eat, meet, sing, and go home again. Maybe we made some announcements, signed some agreements, but mostly we did what we call policy coordination. You just adjust your government regulations. You just implement something on paper.
"But the goals have already been changed presently, and so have the targets. We cannot just declare every year that we want to narrow the development gap and that we want to build a community, and not come up with resources," he said.
However, he added, it would take another 10 years to create the new understanding to build a new community, something that required real resource mobilization.
