The 24th ASEAN
Summit was held in Naypyidaw this past weekend.
To the casual observer (and most of the mainstream media), perhaps not
much happened beyond the usual press releases and handholding ceremonies
(including a relatively bland statement on supporting the ASEAN Economic
Community’s (AEC) implementation). That would be a wrong assessment.
First, the major
accomplishment is that the ASEAN Summit was held without much of a hitch. Considering the great apprehension when
Myanmar was named ASEAN chair for 2014 regarding its political situation, that
is quite something. I say this with
regard to both the procedural and substantive conduct of the ASEAN Summit.
On the former, the Myanmar
government did show that it can pull off a major regional event and gives
confidence that it can repeat the task when the ASEAN dialogue partners come
for the fall 2014 summit. With the
recent court-ordered departure of former Thai prime minister Yingluck
Shinawatra, it would appear that Myanmar is more politically stable than
Thailand at the moment (although the real test is whether we will be able to
say the same thing during next year’s runup to the Myanmar elections).
On the latter, fears that a
Myanmar chairmanship would turn into a repeat of the 2012 Cambodian
chairmanship have been largely dissipated.
Although perhaps Vietnam and the Philippines did not get as strong a reaction
on the South China Sea issue, neither did we have the complete breakdown on the
issue that occurred at the 2012 Phnom Penh summit. This attests to Myanmar’s
different outlook on relations with China as well as to the difference between
Cambodia’s and Myanmar’s approaches to the ASEAN chairmanship.
Second, Malaysia reiterated its
push for reform of the ASEAN institutions.
As discussed in the
previous post, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has proposed changing the
financial structure for the ASEAN Secretariat and other proposals, which
he tabled with the other ASEAN leaders during the Naypyidaw summit. With Malaysia taking over as ASEAN chair in
2015, Malaysia’s active support of ASEAN institutions is a promising
development for ASEAN. The timing is also good, as the ASEAN Charter is due for
a review and the impending December 31, 2015, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)
implementation deadline looks set to be only partially met, meaning that
post-2015 AEC efforts will need additional ASEAN institutional support that the
current setup does not currently offer.
Hopefully, this effort will go further and incorporate the institutional
reforms proposed by former ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan as well as
improving dispute resolution in ASEAN.
