Integration
The dream of a Constitution for ASEAN was formally expressed in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. It was reiterated in Cebu City last year during the ASEAN Summit. The idea is supposed to reach fruition by means of a final draft to be presented in Singapore later this year.For generations, formalizing a closer relationship with our neighbors has been a Filipino aspiration. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, our revolutionary founding fathers forged friendly ties with their counterparts in the region. The 1920s saw a growing sense of solidarity between Filipino leaders and their Indonesian counterparts. By World War II, Manuel Quezon was proposing union with Indonesia as a postwar objective, and by the administration of Diosdado Macapagal, this pan-Malay feeling had found a formal expression in the Maphilindo.
By 1967, ASEAN had been formed, expanding what up to then had been pan-Malayan Filipino sentiments to a growing appreciation of a Southeast Asian identity. The spread of democracy in the region—allowing the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, to lockstep for nearly the first time, as democratic countries—has done much to soothe international jealousies, and to push toward a substantive, and not merely symbolic, ASEAN system.
A growing desire to collaborate economically, among ASEAN member-states, too, has pushed forward the idea of a regional constitution, in many ways, on the model of the European Union.
The process isn’t easy. The European Union’s efforts to draft a constitution revealed that drafting a regional charter is an often frustrating effort. But the European Union, born of the European Economic Community (EEC), has demonstrated the economic benefits member-states can derive from a closer integration of their rules, and the adoption of policies favorable to the populations of its members. Not to mention the advantages gained from lobbying as a bloc.
The vision for an ASEAN Constitution is fundamentally, an economic one: the creation of an ASEAN Economic Community by the year 2020. By then, as ASEAN itself has expressed it, our region will hopefully be characterized by “a free flow of goods, services, investment and a freer flow of capital, equitable economic development and reduced poverty and socio-economic disparities.”
It may be easier to achieve consensus on economic rules and regulations but an ASEAN Constitution will have to be about more than economic matters. It is an encouraging sign, for example, that two countries that traditionally have had warm feelings for each other (the Philippines and Indonesia) and another country, Singapore, with which Filipinos have often differed in terms of political values, have come together to push for the creation of an ASEAN human rights body under a regional charter.
This has put the charter-drafting process at odds with the government of Burma. Filipinos have also not only felt, but expressed, a sense of solidarity with the Burmese people over their thwarted democracy movement. This has placed Filipinos at odds with our own government’s policy concerning Burma, and pressured the Philippines to maintain the democratic line together with other concerned countries.
That being the case, we believe that it’s important, at this point, to support efforts to establish a regional human rights body under the auspices of ASEAN. Philippine NGOs can make common cause with their counterparts in the region, particularly in Indonesia and Cambodia, to continue lobbying our governments to support the idea. It will help our diplomats, who are engaged in the consensus-building process required to produce a charter draft, if they know they have public support for the inclusion of a human rights body in the ASEAN charter.
If ASEAN envisions an ASEAN Economic Community by 2020, it also looks forward to establishing an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community by the same year. It is supposed to be “a community of caring societies and founded on a common regional identity.” A strong aspect of that identity must be that our region represents a strong constituency for the protection of human rights.
