2. The Entry of Democracy into ASEAN’s Discourse
The ASC represents the clearest and most comprehensive response by ASEAN member
states to the need for deeper regional cooperation in managing political-security
challenges. In principle, the ASC constitutes a promise by the leaders of the ASEAN
member states to bring ‘ASEAN’s political and security cooperation to a higher plane to
ensure that countries in the region live at peace with one another and with the world atlarge in a just, democratic and harmonious environment’.2
While the ASC is meant to
address a range of issues and challenges facing ASEAN, it is the inclusion of democracy
that has received most attention from within and outside the region.
The proposal to transform ASEAN into a security community, which requires ASEAN
to become a democratic entity, was first made by Indonesia in June 2003 at the ASEAN
Senior Officials’ Meeting. The proposal avoided direct reference to the imperative of
the ‘democracy agenda’ but clearly amounted to a call for democracy in South East
Asia by the largest ASEAN member state. Indonesia was at the time undergoing a
domestic transformation to become the third-largest democracy in the world. By
political development, Indonesia meant the imperative for ASEAN member states: (a)
‘to promote people’s participation, particularly through the conduct of general elections’;
(b) ‘to implement good governance’; (c) ‘to strengthen judicial institutions and legal
reforms’; and (d) ‘to promote human rights and obligations through the establishment
of the ASEAN Commission on Human Rights’.3
This proposal by Indonesia broke new
ground for the working practices of ASEAN with regard to the place of democracy and
democracy building in its official discourse.
From the outset, Indonesia realized that the proposal would
be met with a degree of resistance by other ASEAN states.
Most were pessimistic about the value of such a regional
endeavour. There was deep concern over the possible
implications of Indonesia’s proposal for the so-called
ASEAN Way. While paying lip service to the importance of
democracy as a foundation of security, many member states
failed to see how ASEAN could reconcile the principle of
non-interference as the basis of peaceful intra-state relations
in the region with the need to promote democracy – as a
collective regional agenda – within a particular member
state. The opposition was so great that Indonesia was
compelled to compromise. The Declaration of ASEAN Concord II only specifies four
measures that ASEAN need take in order to realize the ASC (norm-setting, conflict
prevention, conflict resolution and post-conflict peace-building). It makes no reference
to the political development proposed by Indonesia.4
One year later, during the drafting of the ASCPA, Indonesia revived the political
development agenda. At the 10th ASEAN Summit, Indonesia persuaded the other
ASEAN member states to reinsert the imperative of ‘political development’ as an
integral part of the ASC, both in the ASCPA and the Vientiane Action Programme
(VAP), which was agreed at the Summit. Both documents, however, only adopt a much
watered-down version of the democracy agenda originally proposed by Indonesia.
For example, Indonesia’s earlier proposal on the imperative of general elections was
unsurprisingly dropped. Both documents fail to recognize general elections as a key
element of democracy. The ASCPA, however, does make democracy an objective of
ASEAN when it calls on member states to promote political development in order to
‘achieve peace, stability, democracy and prosperity in the
region’.5
It also states that ‘ASEAN Member Countries shall
not condone unconstitutional and undemocratic changes
of government.’ More importantly, the call for the
promotion of human rights within ASEAN was retained.6
The VAP stresses that the ASC should be achieved
by creating ‘a democratic, tolerant, participatory and
transparent community in Southeast Asia’. Although
imperfect, ASEAN has in principle agreed a democratic
agenda to work on.
The process by which democracy entered ASEAN’s official
discourse defines the nature of this theme as a collective
agenda of regional cooperation. It was not a result of a
genuine collective awareness among regional partners of the
imperative of democracy for individual member states and
the region. It resulted from a political process of bargaining
and compromise driven mostly by obligation and the
need to accommodate the demand of a fellow member of
ASEAN. This partly explains the absence of agreement
on how such an agenda should be pursued in reality.
The language of both the ASCPA and the VAP is vague
regarding the concrete measures that ASEAN member
states need to undertake in order to become democratic entities. Both documents list a
series of normative, rather than prescriptive, measures for ASEAN to work on.