ASEAN leaders are gathering in Singapore, celebrating its 40-year anniversary, and getting ready to sign a landmark charter which will give legal status to ASEAN. Not only that, the leaders are also expected to sign the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint (and you wonder what this is). 

All these headlines sound very good, don't they? Yes, perhaps there are potential gains to be grabbed by legalizing ASEAN and pushing ASEAN toward becoming one economic community. But if one looks a little deeper and give them a little more thought, one could become quite worried about the "progress" of ASEAN. Indeed, there are potentially dangerous implications of the charter and the blueprint that deserve the public attention.

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ASEAN, despite having been in existence for 40 years, has never been a legal entity. ASEAN was never an EU, a WTO or an IMF. ASEAN did not have the power to order its members to do or not to do something. ASEAN, in short, has been a relatively loose association based on voluntary cooperation, with "mutual respect for the independence and sovereignty of all nations" and "non-interference in the internal affairs of one another" as its fundamental principles.

The legalization of ASEAN, however, looks likely to change these situations.

First of all, with ASEAN having its own legal status and charter, ASEAN agreements are set to become more legally-binding than ever before. What this might mean is that if a member country does not follow what is agreed upon in ASEAN, it may be hold legally responsible for that action or lack of action.

Although ASEAN doesn't yet have a dispute settlement body similar to what the WTO has, it is not irrational to expect that some kind of "court" will be set up to settle dispute within ASEAN in the future. And so, if a country's policy or law violates some article in an ASEAN agreement, there is a possibility that the country will be "punished" if found guilty.

Thus, it appears that ASEAN is moving away from its "cooperation" and "non-interference" principles toward something more legally binding. And this could be dangerous if members countries like Thailand do not understand the implications involved.

This is especially alarmingly dangerous when one looks at the internal politics of ASEAN.

Having attended a few ASEAN negotiation meetings myself and having listened to senior officials telling some stories about the politics of ASEAN, I am very cynical about ASEAN and its function. ASEAN seems to be a bureaucratic, slow and uninnovative institution. Plus, the politics inside ASEAN should be a concern to most members. From what I have witnessed, Singapore and Malaysia seem to dominate the forum, pushing for issues that are in the best interest of their countries, while representatives from less powerful countries are not really participating.

The fact that member countries are unequally represented in ASEAN is worrisome. Many less influential member countries appear to say little and have little say in the forum. In a negotiation meeting about possible liberalization of an important economic sector, for example, I hardly heard opinions from representatives of Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Singapore and Malaysia negotiators seem to be really good at their jobs and at leading the forum to accept issues of their own benefits. The Thai representatives have to really listen carefully, think fast and voice out our stance and objection on other countries' ideas whenever necessary. Failure to do so could result in our country ending up being legally binded to some agreement that we do not want.

Plus, there is even a problem of communication among negotiators. Because there are A LOT OF  negotiations touching on various issues going on in ASEAN (check out the November schedule here just so you get the idea http://www.aseansec.org/11-2007.htm), the country representatives are usually government officers who work in the government agencies relevant to the issue being negotiated. Most of them are not trained negotiators. As I have witnessed, some of them even have problems communicating in English.

Another problem is related to the way Thai government agencies function when it comes to ASEAN-related work. and the Thai government agencies have to consult each other before the Thai representatives attend a forum on a particular issue in ASEAN. The problem is that sometimes the Thai govt agencies do not coordinate well enough and thus the Thai reps in ASEAN might end up not pushing for what is in the best interest of Thailand, or even worse, end up accepting things that Thailand shouldn't accept!

In addition, the working of ASEAN is not always transparent, and there are instances which suggest that ASEAN is being used by powerful nations outside ASEAN to push for changes that these superpowers want to see. This could be dangerous especially when ASEAN has acquired its legal status.

Now let's look at the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint.  This blueprint is basically a plan of actions of how to transform ASEAN into a region with free movement of goods, services, skilled labor, investment, and freer movement of capital by 2015.

It's something pretty much similar to a FTA. So, it deserves public scrutiny and there are some questions that need to be answered: What is the scope of this blueprint?; Is is legally binding and, if it is, will we be 'punished' if we fail to follow it?; What are the probable effects on the various sectors in the economy? I wonder how much time our leaders have given to answering (or even asking) these questions.

Sadly, this AEC blueprint has hardly been examined by the public, and we can't really do anything now since it's about to be signed. All we can hope for is that the Thai government agencies who represent Thailand and oversee this blueprint have done their job well enough.