Planned ASEAN reforms the right move, but would need political will

The Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) is undergoing institutional reforms to make the grouping’s working processes more efficient and this issue was discussed by regional leaders during the recent summit in Malaysia.

The reforms include strengthening the ASEAN Secretariat, reducing the number of meetings and tweaking the modalities of summit meetings with dialogue partners.

The aim is to improve the efficiency of the grouping, which will go some way in helping to impose its centrality on the evolving regional architecture and counter criticisms that ASEAN is merely a talk shop.

However, these institutional reforms, especially the important issue of beefing up the ASEAN Secretariat, will require both political will and financial commitment from the member states.

“Improving working methods and strengthening the ASEAN Secretariat may seem a small step for ASEAN to be a more efficient organisation but it is a necessary one in the right direction in order to ensure that decisions are followed up expeditiously and ASEAN is responsive to growing complexities and challenges,” Mr Ong Keng Yong, executive deputy chairman of Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and a former ASEAN secretary-general, told TODAY.

ASEAN has set itself an ambitious target of being an integrated and cohesive community by Dec 31. Even though not all regional integration targets might be met, the grouping is expected to declare the exercise a success and roll over unresolved issues to next year. Meanwhile, work has already begun to articulate post-2015 directions, including how to be a more efficient organisation.

STRENGTHENING THE ASEAN SECRETARIAT

The secretariat, which attends meetings not as a party to the discussions but as an advisory and administrative support entity, has seen its workload increase over the years as ASEAN’s web of dialogue partners has grown. The secretariat now has some 260 staff. About two-thirds are recruited from Indonesia, where it is hosted, and the rest are recruited from other ASEAN member states.

However, the secretariat has been bogged down by more than 1,000 ASEAN meetings every year across the 30 different sectors, including trade, transport, environment and youth.

“They (secretariat officials) are caught up in seemingly endless meeting cycles, with not much time left for more in-depth researching of, and writing papers relevant to, the portfolios they cover,” says Ms Moe Thuzar, lead researcher for Socio-Cultural affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre (ASC) in Singapore.

Limited budget allocation poses another challenge. In 2015, the budget for the secretariat was US$19 million (S$25.6 million), an amount largely unchanged since 2000 even though ASEAN’s GDP has tripled to US$2.3 trillion since then.

The secretariat building in Jakarta, donated by the Indonesian government more than 30 years ago, is badly in need of refurbishment.

Going forward, strengthening the ASEAN Secretariat will require a review of how the secretariat relates to the bloc in terms of its roles and functions. Ms Thuzar said that in the post-2015 scenario, if ASEAN moves into more cross-sectoral collaborations, this will have to be reflected in the ways the ASEAN Secretariat units are organised.

The role of the secretariat as an information and data bank will also need to be enhanced as ASEAN becomes more integrated, she added.

It is clear that the secretariat needs more staff, as requests by member countries for research papers and background briefs grow, said Mr Kavi Chongkittavorn, senior fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok.

“The Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR) cannot do the job. We need experts who specialise in early warning systems, for instance,” said Mr Kavi.

The CPR, a body of ambassadors based in Jakarta, was set up in 2008 to support the work of the ministers and improve coordination within the grouping after the coming into force of the ASEAN Charter.

IMPROVING WORKING METHODS

Beyond secretarial support, ASEAN is looking at how to make better use of time during high-level meetings and cutting down the number of summit meetings from two to one every year.

With the advancements in communications technology and the growing web of interactions among officials, leaders now have the option of relying less on face-to-face interaction. The change could take place as soon as next year, with Laos takes over from Malaysia as the grouping’s chair.

Talks are also in progress on how to improve the modalities, or procedures, of meetings with the 10 dialogue partners (Australia, China, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the United States).

The current arrangement is for all 10 ASEAN leaders to give their national statements in turn, followed by the dialogue partner responding, resulting in limited interaction between the parties in the usually one-hour-long dialogue partner summits held once every year.

A proposal has been put forth for ASEAN to be represented by a troika — the past, present and future member states in charge of coordinating the relationship with the particular dialogue partner — to address the dialogue partners collectively, so as to free up more time for free-flowing discussions.

These efforts to streamline frequency of meetings and create opportunities for substantive interaction will “allow ASEAN to seize opportunities and respond more nimbly to emerging challenges”, noted Mr Ong of RSIS.

While these changes look promising on paper, genuine institutional reforms cannot be achieved without political will and financial commitment. In engaging dialogue partners, for instance, leaders and officials must be prepared for more substantive engagement and spontaneous discussions.

As for financial commitment, member states have each agreed to contribute US$200,000 more to the secretariat budget from this year so that it can implement a new pay scale to attract better staff and keep existing ones. But despite the increase, serious questions remain on how the secretariat can be strengthened without longer-term commitments of financial resources by member states.

“You need money and political will to strengthen the ASEAN Secretariat. Rhetoric aside, nobody really is willing to pay more, including Singapore and Brunei. So, ASEAN is broke, with a US$19 million budget compared with the European Union’s €112 billion (S$165.3 billion) per year,” said Mr Kavi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Albert Wai is a Senior Correspondent at Today’s Foreign Desk who covered last month’s ASEAN Summit in Malaysia. He previously covered ASEAN issues as a Singapore foreign service officer.