Regionalism’s ‘representation’ problem
Ten years ago, a 2007 study surveyed all member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — the Philippines included — regarding how aware college-level students are about the work and directions of the regional body. For the Filipino students assessed by the report, around 55.9% think there’s no difference in their lives if the Philippines wasn’t in ASEAN, and 79.5% pointed out that ASEAN should focus on addressing poverty reduction. If this was the case with college students, what might the normal Juan dela Cruz think?
Of course, there has been no shortage of attempts at bridging this information gap for the past decade. Media outfits and think tanks have brokered projects to stimulate awareness on the push for regional integration in ASEAN ( like the Rappler-Asian Institute of Management team-up in 2015, as well as the continuing efforts of Inter-Press Service Asia Pacific). Just last Wednesday, May 17, the University of the Philippines’ Center for Integrative and Development Studies launched a new book entitled The ASEAN Drama: Half a
Century and Still Unfolding, featuring recent research and debates on ASEAN developments by Filipino scholars. All of these are attempts to promoting ASEAN awareness and policy interest to a wider audience.
Why, then, is there still a significant gap in citizen pressure when it comes to Philippine responses to regional and global affairs? And why does it seem that common citizens’ interests in international diplomacy continue to be sidelined at best (or ignored entirely at worst)?
Perhaps it is important to highlight the long-standing view of diplomacy as primarily a negotiation space reserved only for world leaders and political elites, at least as it was taken for granted in the past. Whatever the policy agenda of these diplomatic links, regional bodies and trade agreements are, they tend to be defined by the prerogatives of their state elites or bureaucrats. As most state institutions do, these run the long-term risk of being insular in their priorities — and not representative of their citizens’ actual intercultural concerns at all.
The perception of regional international relations not being commons-sensitive is further reinforced by continuing neglect of pressing sectoral concerns, particularly on the socioeconomic side. Much criticism is levied on the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC) assembling four separate meetings a year for its Business Advisory Council (which opens multiple opportunities for each nation’s business lobby), while it provides one day a year for each of its multiple sectoral meetings ( for women, workers, youth and the like).
Similar, business sector-skewed arrangements predominate most (if not all) regional bodies in the world. It is no surprise that the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (once led by the United States and Japan) as well as the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are the same in this respect. These deals focus mostly on trade, transfer of goods and intellectual property, as well as cross-state investment agreements. All these are done without any particular sensitivity to the real social, economic, environmental and political costs the receiving countries will experience due to unbalanced trade prospects.
It is thus unsurprising that civil society groups and movements across Southeast Asia are forming cross-solidarity advocacy networks. They try, simultaneously, to pressure their governments to be more circumspect in their engagement with regional bodies, more so with multilateral trade deals.
Last May 10, Trade Justice Pilipinas, a coalition of civil society and sectoral groups across the Philippine progressive spectrum supported by cross-regional groups, lobbied the ASEAN Trade Negotiation Committee and our Department of Trade and Industry against key RCEP provisions. They focused on how the deal will likely entail further reduction of workers’ wages, loss of revenue from the lowering of trade tariffs, as well as the dangerous, pro-big capital investor- state dispute settlement (ISDS) structures.
The Philippines, at least, enjoys a modicum of vibrant civil society presence to pressure our government to listen. The same, however, cannot be said of other countries whose ethnic minorities suffer both state prosecution and development aggression. The most recent case would be the long-embattled Rohingya of Myanmar, whose ancestral domain in Rakhine is the site of one of China’s many projects through the One Belt, One Road scheme. Much hope was reposed in ASEAN in late 2015 and 2016 to contribute to a strong position in taking Myanmar to account for this humanitarian crisis. The results have been disappointing, to say the least. Not to mention the virtual silence of ASEAN on the human cost of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and his pivot to China — what with him helming the seat of ASEAN in its 50th year.
For whose benefit, then, is our participation in ASEAN, multilateral trade agreements and other international diplomatic efforts for? In a globalizing and interconnected world, it is irresponsible to presume global and regional developments can only affect people’s lives for good. Not when most regional engagements have benefited only the elites of our countries — at the cost of inclusive and democratic development for all.
In this maelstrom of domestic issues and geopolitics, the demand to democratize the discourse on transnational economic policy and international affairs has never been higher. States and regional bodies, therefore, should consider expanding the space for sectoral and regional solidarity representation, lest the accusation of lack of accountability (which continues to hound the European Union in the wake of Brexit and the momentum of populist nationalism) be given further weight than it already has.
In a globalizing and interconnected world, it is irresponsible to presume global and regional developments can only affect people’s lives for good.