Asean recovery plan: Business as usual?

With Asean recently presenting its own pandemic recovery plan, officially the Asean “Comprehensive Recovery Framework and its Implementation Plan,” the entire region has a unique opportunity to reboot its integration process. Fully enforcing the recovery plan would certainly provide impetus to the idea that the well-being of the people living in the region is intrinsically linked to an Asean that, as an institution, must necessarily be stronger and far more united than it is now.

The framework will enable member states to have much stronger health systems and more inclusive economies that will leverage the advantages of the digital economy while also fostering more human, sustainable urban centers and being able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Clearly, its implementation will be challenging.

The framework calls for a “whole of community” approach that will help Asean nations deal with the most daunting challenges, including climate change, an issue that has always been masterfully dodged by the leaders of the region.

With the recovery plan, Asean should rethink and simplify its governance to make it more agile and effective. Why not empower the Secretariat?

Empowering the Secretariat in Jakarta will imply a loss in decision-making power in the capitals, in short a reduction in the sovereignty of the member states. Yet a successful recovery plan without a much stronger coordination at the center is almost unthinkable. If the plan is an ambitious undertaking, then it is clear that more effective mechanisms are needed for its implementation.

So the leaders must not harbor any realistic illusions about rebooting their economies and facing head-on the huge social challenges their people are facing without stronger and more effective “central” governance.

The recovery framework offers a new opportunity, not only in terms of simplifying the way Asean works, but also in terms of trimming the many overlapping plans and initiatives set through periodic cycles of joint planning.

Perhaps the next five years should be entirely focused on implementing the recovery framework while finding ways to involve and engage the citizens of the region. Without them kept informed and aware of the developments in the implementation of the plan, we will never create the foundations of a “common” regional sense of belonging.

At the end of the day, this is the Achilles heel of Asean—the fact that it is not yet a community of citizens, because it was not designed to be a people-centered project but is instead just a top-down mechanism set in motion by the political elite, a big compromise between nations that are not on the same page in terms of core values.

Unfortunately, human rights and democratic norms will never be at the center of the regional conversation, unless pressure will mount from within and from outside Asean.

Real political integration will require surrendering power in a meaningful and real way to better advance the interests of the citizenry. This is hardly a foreseeable outcome for now, but implementing the framework might involuntarily induce citizens to ask for more.

Key questions remain to be answered: Will the usual Asean approach work in a post-pandemic world? Will the citizens of the region be satisfied with it, or will they be willing, slowly, to build a sense of common agency for a better common future?

Equally important will be to see if the international community, whose financial support is going to be fundamental to make the recovery plan a reality, will chip in when the usual “Asean way” runs the course.

What about the people of the region who will remain excluded from the process of integration and, in many cases, will continue to lack their most fundamental freedoms?Surely the European Union, which recently elevated Asean to a strategic partner, will have to think about how its bet on the bloc will turn out to be truly beneficial to the people of Southeast Asia.

—The Jakarta Post/ANN

* * *

Simone Galimberti is cofounder of ENGAGE and writer on social inclusion, volunteerism, youth development, regional integration, and the SDGs in the context of the Asia Pacific.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a member of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 22 media titles in the region.