KUALA LUMPUR: Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin believes the Asean Young Leaders Summit over this weekend would drive forward the need for Asean to be a more people-centric organisation, understood and shared by all citizens of its member nations.
Speaking after attending the various breakout meetings and discussions at the summit held at the Putra World Trade Centre yesterday, Khairy stated his confidence that the manifesto which would be formulated and presented to the Asean secretariat on Sunday would address his call for a shared manifesto that was practical, feasible and one that would be implemented.
"This is why we have such summits, because we don't want Asean to merely be an establishment of inter-government relations and an agreement on diplomatic relations. Asean needs to shift to a people-centric rather than government-centric organisation, which means each citizen of any Asean nation would understand what Asean stands for," said Khairy.
"We have to bring Asean to the people. This is why we have to bring Asean to the people. I think the entire eco-system of this week and the resolutions that come out will be very useful for Asean going forward."
The Asean Young Leaders Summit this time was attended by delegates from the 10 Asean nations along with dialogue partners from 10 other countries across the world, including the United States, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia and the European Union.
"I've had an opportunity to go around the breakout sessions and from the discussions that I've picked up on and listened to, I think the participants are narrowing down on specific proposals.
"The facilitators and moderators have been excellent because they've challenged the participants on things like feasibility, whether or not its realistic, scalable. Sometimes in events like this, you want to do something but its not feasible," said Khairy.
Khairy had, in his opening address on Wednesday, blasted a resounding message to delegates that the summit should result in a manifesto that was practical and an could be implemented, rather than one that was merely a "nicely-worded document". Yesterday, he was confident that the message was well received.
"We must be able to do something that we can find the funding, the support and the buy-in for. Those three things have been really put out there and participants have been challenged to come up with specific programmes that we can bring up to the Asean secretariat level and I've committed to them that some of these will see the light of day in terms of programmes," said Khairy.
-ends-