Will ASEAN give a look at Burma and Thailand?

With the 12th ASEAN Leaders Summit formally opening in a couple of days, there's a lot of speculation as to what kind of charter ASEAN will adopt as proposed by the Eminent Persons Group (EPG). We can expect ASEAN charter to be based on or adhere to time-honored democratic principles, which then brings us to the problems of ASEAN's deafening silence about the happenings in Myanmar a.k.a. Burma and Thailand which recently threw a civilian-led democracy in favor of a military junta.

Burmese leader U Nu's actually was ahead of many ASEAN countries including the Philippines when his faction established a Federal System of government for Burma. But in 1962 a military coup led by Gen Ne Win ousted U Nu and abolished the federal system he put in place thus ushering "the Burmese Way to Socialism." All told, the economy was nationalized and a single Socialist political party was created and newspapers were completely banned! That's the situation that the Burmese people face today. They are not that much different from that rogue nation that calls itself North Korea.

The only opposition leader in Burma is Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and she cannot even leave her walled compound. This has been happening to her for many years despite all international calls for Burma to release her. This brings us to the question… why would Burma's strongmen led by its Head of State Senior General Than Shwe or its Head of Government Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Soe Win be so scared of a very thin and frail woman who has no guns or goons or army? The only thing the ASEAN really did was to convince Burma not to host the ASEAN Summit, which is why we're having this summit here in Cebu this week. The ASEAN ought to do more!

At this point, we earnestly hope that the framers of the ASEAN charter would come up with certain guidelines (perhaps a temporary suspension from ASEAN membership) against its member countries when they turn away from their democratic processes. The ASEAN should discuss these pressing issues no matter how ticklish and no matter how embarrassing it is to the member countries.

If for instance the Philippine government would be overthrown by a coup d'état and newspapers were shut down, it would be a great comfort to the millions of Filipinos that ASEAN as a whole would publicly chastise those power grabbers. When Martial Law was declared by then Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos on September 21, 1972 (I first heard about it on our car radio on our way to Washington D.C. the capital of the United States. But those where the days when cellphones was still a comic book dream and we could only get a phone link to the Philippines a week later) all opposition to Marcos had been stifled, jailed or gone to hiding and all newspapers shutdown.

We went back to New York City and since my brother worked for the United Nations (UN) we could come in and watch the proceedings of the UN General Assembly. It was there that the venerable Filipino diplomat Carlos P. Romulo stood on the UN podium to defend Martial Law in the Philippines. Pres. Marcos's plans to grab power were complete. He threw out Asia's first democracy and installed himself as dictator of the Philippines and the whole world applauded not realizing that the Filipino people lived in total fear.

America who gave the Philippine Islands its gift of democracy even turned a blind eye when democracy was stabbed in the back. Back in those days we were so naïve about global politics. It turned out that democracy was only important if its suits American interests. As one American quipped, "Marcos is a son-of-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch!" How naïve we were to belatedly realize that Democracy wasn't important to America in those days. American interest was more important to any democratic processes.

What about Thailand? Todate, we didn't hear a whimper from ASEAN when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was overthrown a few months ago. When the Thai military generals promised a return to civilian life come December we gracefully accepted their word. But then they said in the month of December without stating what year that would be. I exhort the ASEAN to put the Burmese and the Thai issue on the table in their meeting a few days from today.

One of the great plans for the ASEAN member nations is for a single unified ASEAN following the lines of the European Union (EU), something no one ever thought would happen to the multi-cultured Europeans… but it happened. So if the ASEAN wanted to follow these lines, it must first have the political will to put a challenge to its members to represent its respective peoples, not only its power-hungry leaders like what they have in Burma.