The ASEAN Identity from My Perspective

ASEAN Identity? Such a wonderful dream? Will this dream become real? The creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1967 to some extend informed the dream of ASEAN Identity among ASEAN leaders. Yet, the way to visualize this ASEAN Identity dream into a reality still remains challenging despite a number of frameworks and efforts among ASEAN leaders toward achieving this ultimate goal.

Without questions, unlike European Community, ASEAN Community is rather an open community, where political identity of each member is greatly respected and has no “string attached” to a specific political system. In other words, every member of ASEAN is not bound to any political system as far as the ASEAN Charter is concerned. It is more on mutual respect or understanding than assigned obligations though there are certain criteria required to become an ASEAN member. Even though it may sound relatively relaxing, to some degree it has posited quite a challenging stand to promote a single ASEAN Identity, given a reason each country may have to be parallel with her internal system and may not give up her identity for the sake of ASEAN one as a whole, if we infer from a cynically political point of view. However, the question of ASEAN Identity does not just rely on a political foundation but it may depend more importantly on the economic and cultural ones where ASEAN people or the so-called “ASEANer” are expected to interact with one another personally. Therefore, the recent officially integrated ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), in my personal view, will certainly pave a great road to making a dream of a single ASEAN Identity become real.

An obvious instance is that the AEC will facilitate the flow of ASEAN labors across the region where current immigration bureaucratic burdens shall be reduced and the illegal migration issues among all could be better settled down. A practical implementation of the “ASEAN Lane” at the airports of ASEAN countries, for example, could be a good initiation toward an advancement of the ASEAN Identity. But, such implementation requires heavily a strong collective action and commitment from all ASEAN countries, as so far very few of ASEAN countries have keenly taken actions.