| Home > Asia Pacific | |
Indonesia NGO blasts Asean meeting as 'waste of money'
Agence France Presse - October 27, 2010
Ian Timberlake, Hanoi – Southeast Asian leaders and their retinues gather again in Hanoi this week for their latest forum – part of an annual calendar of 400 meetings and events that just keeps growing.
While the list of events for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is long, critics say their accomplishments are small, and even some diplomats have questioned whether the meetings are worth the cost.
"It's such a waste of money," said Yuna Farhan, secretary general of the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra), the country's budget watchdog.
Asean's 2010 calendar runs to 13 pages and lists more than 400 engagements throughout the 10-nation bloc – and beyond. Many are summits or forums on weighty topics including transnational crime and maritime security.
But the calendar also includes the more esoteric "Asean-India Workshop on the Thermally Sprayed Coating" and an event called "Inception Meeting on the Establishment of the Asean Network of Experts on S&T Indicators."
"I don't think our lives change after meetings or promises of the leaders," said Tran Thi Ly, 41, a Hanoi fruit vendor near the luxury Melia Hotel where some ASEAN officials will stay during their visit. "Waste of money, yes, surely," she said.
Asean foreay, known as the East Asia Summit, include the leaders of six regional partner nations as well. By the end of Vietnam's year as Asean chairman it will have hosted two summits, a high-level regional security forum and separate talks involving ASEAN economic, foreign and labour ministers.
There was also a new meeting for Asean's homeland security chiefs, and an inaugural gathering of defence ministers from Asia and the United States. Indonesia, which will chair the bloc next year, has a proposed state budget of Rp 93 billion ($10.4 million) for five Asean meetings in 2011, Fitra said.
Pham Quang Vinh, who heads Vietnam's senior officials preparing for Asean meetings, said it was too soon to know the cost of his country's chairmanship. "There are many meetings in a year," Vinh conceded.
Asean was formed with an initial membership of five in 1967 with the notion that countries that hold regular talks are less likely to quarrel, said Damien Kingsbury, a Southeast Asia specialist at Australia's Deakin University.
If a sense of regional cooperation and goodwill are important, then the meetings are justified, he said. "It's expensive, but the elites of Southeast Asia have never been too concerned about spending money that might be used for more egalitarian development purposes," Kingsbury added.
But Christopher Roberts of the University of Canberra said participating in Asean meetings "really stretches the resources, particularly of the poorer members such as Cambodia."
All the talking would be worthwhile if it led to results that helped people, said Debbie Stothard of the Bangkok-based Alternative Asean Network on Burma, a human rights group. "Unfortunately, that's not been our experience," she said.
Vinh, the Vietnamese official, said that as chairman, Vietnam has helped "to bring the Asean community to its people."
Yet many of ASEAN's nearly 600 million citizens are far removed from the officials in their air-conditioned meeting halls.
"I don't know what they are doing," said Saipin Tonthong, 38, a Bangkok street-food vendor. Those people have money," said Peter Chua, 65, at his shoe-repair stand surrounded by Singapore's high-rise offices. I have no money and have to earn a living using my own hands," Chua said, raising his callused palms.
See also:
 |