How can the ASEAN become truly an Economic Community of the ASEAN majority, meaning the working population?
The ASEAN leadership should re-think development. The issue is how to make integration balanced, inclusive, equitable and welfare-enhancing for all. Four decades after, the ASEAN is finally talking of the need for an ASEAN Charter and the challenge of developing an ASEAN economic community. It is time that certain assumptions and approaches on economic integration be subjected to a more rigorous scrutiny. The First ASEAN Civil Society Summit in Kuala Lumpur, January 2005, came up with the following ten demands: • Share information with civil societies on the proposed ASEAN Constitution. • Set up mechanism for engagement with civil societies on regional concerns. • Transform ASEAN Parliamentary Caucus into ASEAN Parliament with peoples’ representation. • Translate commitments to rights of workers, women, children, migrants, elderly and refugees into doable instruments. • Take decisive action on trans-boundary security/environmental concerns, e.g., haze, bird flu, migration, etc. • Seek
