The 2nd ASEAN Reader

8. ASEAN Institution Building

36 Chin Kin Wah By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville 8. ASEAN INSTITUTION BUILDING CHIN KIN WAH Reprinted in abridged form from Chin Kin Wah, “ASEAN Institution Building”, in ASEAN Towards 2020: Strategic Goals and Future Directions, edited by Stephen Leong (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia, and London: ASEAN Academic Press, 1998), pp. 153–69, by permission of the author and the publishers. TOWARDS THE PRESENT INSTITUTIONAL CONFIGURATION The institutional structure of Asean in the third transition beginning from 1992 reflects a process of incremental modification of a structure largely traceable to the Bali summit and the selective inputting of recommendations from the subsequent task forces on institutional reform. Significantly , it was the fourth Asean summit held in Singapore in January 1992, that provided the political watershed for the endorsement of institutional changes relating to the summit meetings, the economic committees and the Asean Secretariat. The declared objective of the Singapore summit to accelerate economic cooperation, in particular, the establishment of the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA) through the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme did have an important bearing on the decision to selectively strengthen the Asean machinery including the central Secretariat. Since the fourth Asean summit, the Asean Heads of Government meetings (the highest decision-making body in Asean today) have been regularised — with the formal summit taking place once every three years on a rotational basis and with annually rotating informal summits in between. Below this structure is the AMM whose establishment goes back to the founding of Asean, and which as indicated previously, is the ‘receptacle ’ of the political sovereignties of the regional association. The second Asean summit held in Kuala Lumpur in 1977 did agree that the AMM could include other relevant ministers as and when necessary. Since then, the AEM began to meet annually and separately. In time, ministers of specific sectors of economic cooperation (such as Energy, Agriculture, and Forestry) as well as non-economic ministers (of Health, Environment, Labour, Social Welfare, Education, Science and Technology , Information and Justice/Law) also convened their own meetings. More re008 AR Ch 8 22/9/03, 12:38 PM 36 ASEAN Institution Building 37 By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville cently the Asean Ministers of Transport too began to meet formally.1 While there is coordination between meetings of the other ministers and the AMM, each of the ministerial blocs could also report directly to the Heads of Government. In the absence of a Council of Ministers, there is a Joint Ministerial Meeting (JMM) established since the 1987 Manila Summit, to facilitate crosssectorial coordination between the AEM and AMM. The JMM however meets as and when necessary (under joint AMM and AEM chairmanship) although they usually meet prior to the Heads of Government meetings. The different phases of institutional renovation has generally left untouched the political standing of the ASC which is the acknowledged policy arm and organ of coordination of Asean between the AMMs. Since the 1992 Singapore summit, the five economic committees (namely COFAF, COFAB, COIME, COTAC and COTT) have been dissolved and their work and activities as well as those of their subsidiary bodies and sub-committees taken over by the Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM) which is required to convene at least four times a year and which reports directly to the AEM. However the non-economic committees, all of 1978 vintage namely the Committee on Science and Technology (COST), the Committee on Social Development (COSD) and the Committee on Culture and Information (COCI) remain and continue to report to the ASC and relevant meetings of Ministers. Besides these committees, other meetings of senior officials have been progressively regularised over the years. They now range over a wide area from the Environment (Asean Senior Officials on the Environment or ASOEN), Drug Matters (Asean Senior Officials on Drug Matters or ASOD), Civil Service Matters (Asean Conference on Civil Service Matters or ACCSM), Energy (Senior Officials Meeting on Energy or SOME) and Transport (Senior Transport Officials Meeting or STOM). To facilitate intersectorial coordination at the officials level between SOM, SEOM and the Asean-DGs, the 1987 Manila Summit established the Joint Consultative Meeting (JCM) which also includes the Asean Secretary-General who reports the results of the JCM to the AMM and AEM.2 Reflecting the expansion of Asean’s dialogue partnerships with third countries over the years is the growing number...