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Will Cambodia as chair lead ASEAN to ending Myanmar crisis?
While PM Hun Sen can always visit Myanmar and meet with the junta, if he acts within the context of the Cambodian chairmanship in ASEAN, there is a necessity for him to consult and communicate with other ASEAN leaders.
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Hun Sen speaks at the World Economic Forum in Vietnam on Sept. 12, 2018, saying Myanmar's government is misunderstood in its crackdown against the Rohingya. (AFP)
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ust recently, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who will soon assume ASEAN chairmanship, revealed his plan to visit Myanmar in his capacity as Cambodian leader to meet with the military junta officials next month. Surprisingly, he stated that State Administration Council representatives should be invited to ASEAN meetings, which contradicts the stance of ASEAN leaders.
The Myanmar junta was barred from the last ASEAN Summit as well as the China-ASEAN Summit despite Myanmar’s position as the coordinator. Indonesia has also maintained the precedence by not inviting Myanmar to the 14th Bali Democracy Forum (BDF), scheduled for today.
While elucidating the reason to recognize Myanmar as a member of the ASEAN “family”, Hun Sen emphasized that no ASEAN member state had the right to expel another member under the ASEAN Charter, which according to him is a manifestation of the long-upheld non-interference principle.
There has been high expectation on Cambodia as the ASEAN chair in 2022. However, its recent shift and moody position toward the Myanmar crisis has unfortunately signaled that it is still a long way for ASEAN to really undertake its responsibility as a regional organization to facilitate an effective solution to the crisis, let alone fulfilling the wishes of the Myanmar people.
During the ASEAN Special Leaders’ Meeting in April of this year, which concluded with the issuance of a five-point consensus, Hun Sen used the opportunity to bluntly tell junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing about Cambodia’s experience as the benefactor of ASEAN’s peacemaking and peacebuilding process when settling its own internal political conflict.
Later, responding to the junta’s protest against the decision of the nine ASEAN members to invite only a non-political representative to the 38th and 39th ASEAN summits, Hun Sen made a bold comment that echoed the organization’s standpoint. He underlined that it was not ASEAN that expelled Myanmar. Rather, it was Myanmar that abandoned its right and disinvited itself by not taking up the offer. Hun Sen made it clear that it was because of Myanmar that ASEAN had fallen into an ASEAN minus one situation.
These gestures certainly raised much expectation that Cambodia would become a better chair than its predecessor. Aside from Cambodia’s previous peace facilitation experiences with ASEAN, there is a necessity for Cambodia to show its ability to lead ASEAN, especially after the past failure of ASEAN to reach a joint communiqué in 2012.
