De Venecia pushes for ‘100 years of peace’

Speaker Jose de Venecia Friday night asked representatives of 43 parliaments of East, Central and West Asia attending a conference in Chongqing, China to initiate "100 years of peace" to eradicate poverty and avert military confrontations in the world’s largest continent.

Speaking at the third general assembly of the Asian Parliaments for Peace (APP), De Venecia, a major advocate of Asian economic and political integration, said peace in this poverty-stricken region would create the Asian middle class, a major factor in the fight against poverty.

The House leader spoke on the night former Chinese Premier Li Peng, now president of the Chinese Parliament, was unanimously elected president of the APP.

De Venecia was elected vice president, virtually assuring him of election to next year’s presidency of the APP, according to Prince Ranarridh of Cambodia, the outgoing APP president.

The APP, composed of 43 nations, is now emerging as the largest and most influential group of parliamentarians in Asia encompassing East Asia, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and West Asia up to Turkey.

Turkey, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and the People’s Republic of Korea are the newest members of the association.

In his speech, De Venecia said the creation of Asean plus three – China, Japan and South Korea – must now be expedited. This, he proposed, would lead to Asean’s merger with SAARC which includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Sikkim.

He said East Asia must eventually integrate with Central Asia and West Asia all the way to the Bosporus as part of what he called "long-term large-scale political and economic integration of Asia" culminating in a final Asian community or an Asian Union.

"Europe did it in 49 years, step by step," de Venecia said.

He reiterated his call for the creation of an Asean Parliament and said the Philippine House of Representatives has already sent a team of scholars to study the European model, including the processes involved in its creation.

The committee’s findings will be submitted by the House delegation in next September’s Asean Inter-Parliamentary Organization conference scheduled in Hanoi.

De Venecia said the APP will eventually have to invite Australia and New Zealand as members in the overall vision of Asian integration "so they will not feel isolated and outflanked in the South Pacific."

De Venecia and Li were the only speakers on the final day of the assembly at a farewell dinner tendered for the delegates in this 3,000-year-old industrial city of 31 million people set on the banks of the Yangtze River.

At the close of the conference, De Venecia and his small party flew from Chongqing to Beijing to observe China’s railway technology that could be adopted in the modernization and rehabilitation program of the Philippine National Railways which de Venecia proposed last year.

He was accompanied by Reps. Antonio Cuenco of Cebu and Roque Ablan Jr. of Ilocos Norte. — Perseus Echeminada