EDITORIAL - Asean’s hot potato

Oh well, you can’t fault the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for not trying. These days some ASEAN members must be regretting their support for the inclusion of Myanmar into the grouping. The "constructive engagement" with the repressive junta in Yangon was supposed to speed up economic and political reforms in Myanmar. By most indications, however, the experiment in diplomacy has failed, and next year it will be the turn of Myanmar to assume the rotating ASEAN chair.

Already some of ASEAN’s dialogue partners are making noises about boycotting all activities of the grouping next year. Their stance will soften only if Myanmar undertakes convincing steps toward democratic reforms, including the release of opposition members led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

But during the weeklong general assembly in Manila of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the post-conference gathering in Cebu, Myanmar made it known that it had no plans of either relinquishing the ASEAN chair or implementing significant reforms in the immediate future. Rules are rules; for Yangon, it’s either expulsion from the grouping or acceptance as ASEAN chair. And it looks like ASEAN will be the first to blink.

The prospect of one of the world’s most repressive police states chairing ASEAN, and constantly reminding the grouping of its long-held policy of non-intervention in each other’s affairs, is already triggering a reassessment of foreign policies in several Southeast Asian capitals. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 made it clear that one sick nation in the region could quickly infect everyone else. Will the region also suffer from the pariah status of one of its members?

That pariah is eager to step into the global limelight next year, in line with rules that it seems confident of being upheld, no matter how reluctantly, by ASEAN. In welcoming Myanmar into its fold, ASEAN had legitimized the junta’s strong-arm rule; democratic reforms were not written into the acceptance form. ASEAN is stuck with this hot potato, and the grouping has no one to blame but itself.