MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The farce of ASEAN, bilateral and other visits

THE SINGAPORE Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, visits Indonesia and Malaysia. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia vists Singapore and Malaysia. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, visits Singapore and Indonesia. Each of these official visits on taking office were dressed up as bilateral visits when it should have been as part of the ASEAN mechanism. But is there an ASEAN consensus now? No. What was once a powerful regional organisation is now a pale shadow of it, with neither Malaysia and Singapore, once its anchor, working hard to keep it going. What saved it was Singapore, which kept it going, with its active interest in it, especially when ASEAN doubled its members to ten, its centre of focus shifting from Jakarta to Bangkok as the Buddhism replaced Islam as its dominant faith. Singapore did not see any point in continuing with this charade, for that is what it became, gave up the ghost, hitched its star as the US's regional proxy in its war on terror and Islam bashing.

It was one-upmanship all the way, with officials and politicians unwilling to give way or even explain their point of view. The aim was to best the other in a hammerlock, and to show their citizens he could be trusted to represent their interests to the world outside, especially their hated neighbours. It was essentially to carry their citizens with him that the visits went on. International law and ASEAN practice were thrown out the window. It did not always succeed. Indonesia's six decade civil war in Aheh could not give way to conciliation after the tsunami and earthquake. It is the rebels that have the upper hand there because it is on the ground. The Indonesian armed forces is not about to give way: it lost at least 25,000 of its soldiers in the tsunami.

In Malaysia, Mr Lee had only bilateral issues in mind, offering to trade Malaysia's irrelevant political issues like its impractical proposal to replace the causeway with a crooked drawbridge thought of at the spur of the moment by a consortium of UMNO politicians and business men and one which made no sense whatever with Singapore's need for a continuos supply of Malaysian water and military overflights at will over Malaysian airspace. All it revealed was that Pak Lah cannot deliver, with even his UMNO in Johore insisting it be consulted first. It revealed a naked Pak Lah, like the naked emperor, insisting he is fully clothed. All three revel in rhetoric to rally its troops but annoying its neighbors instead.

ASEAN is all but dead, like the League of Nations long after its irrelevance, but it continue to exist, with no role than to arrange bilateral visits by its members with each other. The ASEAN tradition of cutting through red tape, with its leaders calling each other on the telephone and meeting privately to prevent bilateral and multilaterval issues getting out of hand, is now a dead letter. I dare say there is no one in most ASEAN capitals who could call each other to discuss issues without causing an international incident. Once it was the norm, so that often tendentious and irreconciliable issues are kept out of the public eye as ASEAN leaders consulted behind the scenes to resolve it quietly. At Wisma Putra, there is hardly any official or minister who could call his ASEAN counterpart to discuss a contentious issue without bilateral ties put to risk.

When an independent Vietnam flexed its muscles, and its prime minister, Mr Pham van Dong, came avisiting, the unity of ASEAN made it a painful visit for him. The countries kept each other informed of the Vietnamese prime minister's aim of causing a rift within ASEAN. By the time he visited Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was there to tell him off. That would not be possible now.

Relations between Malaysia and Thailand reflects in one way the coming confrontation between Buddhism and Islam, a mirror of the problem in ASEAN. The century-old frustrations of the Thai Malay Muslims in its south is now transformed as a digit in the war on terror. This misrepresents the problem since it is more than that: it is an internal hegemonic fight for control between the Thai armed forces and the Thai police for the area, in which the Thai Muslim desire for autonomy is the nut in the political nutcracker. No attempt is made to mediate, and the war on words is seen in both capitals as diplomacy. It is made worse by Malaysian leaders raising the ante without studying the issue and attempt to mediate. But the confrontation, however viewed, is real. The Thai prime minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawantra, cannot visit Malaysia unless he can convince the Buddhist Thais he would not back down.

Cabinet ministers in all countries conduct public policy by megaphone, react to press reports, state policies at press conferences. The need for instant and often irrelevant public support is all that matters. In these circumstances, current issues like illegal workers in Malaysia are focussed on particular countries, like Indonesia, when they come from a wider swathe of countries, from the Indian sub-continent to China and the Philippines. But ASEAN leaders when they travel further afield bring their parish pump politics to those shores too. Pak Lah was in Pakistan on what was declared to be an official visit, but it turned out to be no more than to declare open a Malaysian business there. There were no joint statements or joint communiques. The visit was ignored in Pakistan and Malaysia. In the midst of it, the Indian foreign minister arrives, and relegated the Pak Lah visit to greater irrelevance. The news papers in both countries ignored the visit. And it developed into farce when the Indian foreign minister, Mr Natwar Singh, arrived mid-way, and relegated Pak Lah to a tourist.

The ignoring of ASEAN has opened old wounds – racial, religious, territorial – made worse by megaphone diplomacy, and to view the world beyond in its own image. No institution can grow in neglect. As the National Front, UMNO and its other members, find out. That it exists gives it its own momentum. When Bismark united the Germanic states of Europe into a Central European power, the Ottoman Empire was checked, though it lingered for another 50 years before it faded into history. Regional warlords flex their muscles, but that is all they can do: flex their muscles. We see that in a small way in UMNO politics. Today, this is reflects in every official visit. The issues are parochial, like politics at home. It is a reflection of the political tsunami in our midst, and when it strikes, as it must, the political damage could be worse than the natural.

For Pak Lah, his travels overseas gives him a respite from his poliical and administrative difficulties at home. He has, for whatever reason, taken the easy way out, establish his control through sheer bluster and depending on his private office to micromanage the country. It fails. His homilies are dismissed as water off the duck's back. In one sense, his predicament is a local version of the problems of leadership in UMNO, Malaysia, and the world outside. It is the chaos that precedes the rebuilding. That chaos cannot be reversed.

[This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah, the PAS organ, published on 22 February 2005.]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com