ASEAN leaders are expected to meet this week in Thailand for this year’s first ASEAN Summit to discuss various issues in the region.

Ahead of the first summit in Bangkok, Indonesia’s lead ASEAN affairs official, Jose Tavares, revealed that the bloc would send a team of senior officials to Timor Leste in September in a bid to assess Dili’s readiness.

While reiterating Indonesia’s support, Jose said this “fact-finding mission” would meet with authorities to conduct a series of interviews regarding Dili’s seriousness about becoming a member of ASEAN.

“Indonesia really supports Timor Leste’s application because if we talk about Southeast Asia, it is the only country that has not yet become an ASEAN member,” he told The Jakarta Post in a recent briefing.

“So why can’t Timor Leste also enjoy the stability and prosperity achieved by ASEAN?”

Dili’s membership application has been on ASEAN’s agenda for the better part of a decade, following its application in 2011 during Indonesia’s chairmanship of ASEAN. Before that, Timor Leste joined the ASEAN Regional Forum in 2005 and acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation — a requirement for countries to engage formally with ASEAN — in 2007.

ASEAN has previously commissioned feasibility studies in three main areas — political security, economy and socioculture — to assess the small island country’s readiness to join the group.

Based on Jose’s account, the studies “generally show positive results even though Timor Leste still needs to increase its capacity [and] ability to [...] engage in meetings in ASEAN”.

ASEAN ascribes to the principle of equality and emphasizes equal rights and equal responsibility among member states, which includes equal contributions toward ASEAN’s operational costs, estimated at around US$2 million per member, in accordance with the 2016 budget.

Experts have said that the membership fee, in addition to the tough demands on diplomatic staffers, would likely put Timor Leste in a disadvantaged position.

Taking up the eastern half of Timor Island, with the western half part of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province, Timor Leste is geographically closer to Southeast Asia than the South Pacific, although it has not enjoyed much of the prosperity that ASEAN has garnered as a region.

Combined, ASEAN is currently the fifth-largest economy in the world, with a consumer market of some 640 million people and a total gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.76 trillion, exceedingly larger than Timor Leste’s 1.3 million people and GDP of $2.95 billion.

Other observers have cautioned against passing judgment on the small island nation based on overly narrow parameters.

Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations experts from Padjajaran University in Bandung, West Java, said Indonesia should convince other ASEAN members that consideration of Timor Leste’s admission should not be based solely on economic capacity, particularly as economic disparities between member states was already common in ASEAN.

He noted how, even as more advanced economies like Singapore lead the pack, others such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were still able to meet ASEAN Economic Community targets.

“Indonesia’s big brother role should come into play to build solidarity among member states. This should not only be about economic capacity,” Rezasyah said on Tuesday.

Following Cambodia’s admission in 1999, Timor Leste remains the final missing piece toward an ASEAN that encompasses all of Southeast Asia. (tjs)

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