The stars seem to be aligned as Asean celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. All the more so, perhaps, because much of the celebrations will be centred in the Philippines, which has just assumed the annually rotating chairmanship of the grouping from Laos.
The year-long 50th Asean anniversary commemoration was formally launched at the beginning of the week in Davao City, hometown of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, by Duterte himself. Thus was launched activities, which will include more than 100 meetings and two leaders’ summits.
The person of Duterte himself has been the focus of unending international fascination, of course, since he unexpectedly won the Philippine presidency last May. He hosted his first foreign visitor — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — days earlier to breakfast in his rather-modest Davao abode before pronouncing to a clearly impressed Abe that the Philippines and Japan were closer than brothers.
Foreign envoys, among them those from China and the United States, dutifully trooped to Davao to hear Duterte speak at the Asean anniversary launch. Under a theme of “Partnering for Change, Engaging the World”, the Philippine leader uncharacteristically stuck to his prepared script: “We express our shared determination to ensure stability and security from external interference in any form of negotiation in order to preserve our national identity.
“I also call on Asean dialogue-partners to renew their dedication to the valued purposes and principles stated in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, including non-interference, in promoting regional peace and stability through abiding respect for the rule of law.”
The Chinese ambassador mouthed for the camera fulsome agreement of what Duterte said while the new American ambassador sat rather stiffly in a somewhat awkward, if cordial, meeting with the president.
To further press home his point, Duterte had, a week earlier, visited the first Russian warship to make a port of call to his country, formally still allied to the US, urging the Russians to help protect his country.
The Philippine president is just the first act in an electoral phenomenon which culminates most dramatically today with a sequel in the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president.
The Philippines may thus be in the vortex of a geopolitical struggle, which will be played out through the year in ways still largely unpredictable. The omens are somewhat troubling, though, especially with incoming US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson threatening that China will be denied access to islands the latter has built up in the South China Sea.
This, as the Philippines has publicly committed that it will not raise in any Asean forum this year the arbitration ruling it had won in its disputes with China over overlapping claims in that sea, thus putting on the back-burner the simmering bilateral spat with China which had threatened to spiral into open confrontation.
In return, there appears to be quite a bidding war going on between China and Japan to gain Manila’s favour with pledges of official development assistance to the country. Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez had announced that such assistance from China and Japan alone in the six months since Duterte came to power totalled US$18 billion (RM80.8 billion), in a mixture of outright grants and long-term, low-interest loans. That is not counting investment pledges from both countries.
In a welcome twist, the Philippine-US relations look slated for a return to a more even keel when Trump takes over. There has been no repeat of the angry exchanges of words between Duterte and outgoing US President Barack Obama. Trump and his appointees seem to know better than to rub the Philippine president the wrong way.
There is little incentive now for Manila to endanger the overflow of aid, attention and goodwill from the major powers by seeking to rock the geopolitical boat further. Duterte’s policy of friendship with all-comers aligns well with Malaysia’s own emollient foreign-policy stance towards all the big powers.
This comes as Vietnam, another Asean member with overlapping sea claims with China, seems similarly aligned with Malaysia’s and the Philippines’ stance.
All this should augur well for Asean this anniversary year. Much global trade passes through its vital sea-lanes and the big powers should be careful that their desire for “freedom of navigation” through open, international waters will not be disrupted in any way or worse, that its denial becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Trump’s ascendancy should provide China that rare opportunity to show its Asean neighbours that it is not the regional bully that Obama had painted it to be.
John Teo views developments
in the nation, the region and the
wider world from his vantage point
in Kuching, Sarawak