The Riptide of Progress

Inspiration: The Philippines in the Advent of ASEAN 2015

Progress is impossible witout change, and those who cannot change

their minds cannot change anything.1 Member countries of the ASEAN are
moving forward in regards of achieving the ASEAN Economic Community
in the year 2015. This ASEAN integration is a more of a mirror-like
resemblance with the European Union of Europe where economic give and
take where shared by member countries. Thus, when economic progress is
being the topic of the discussions between the members, everything falls in
the same subject; education, public policy, economy, international law,
treaties, tariffs and the like.
An ASEAN single market and production base shall comprise five
core elements (i) free flow of goods; (ii) free flow of services; (iii) free flow
of investment; (iv) free flow of capital; and (v) free flow of skilled labour. In
addition, the single market and production vase also include two important
components, namely, the priority integration sectors, and food, agriculture
and forestry.2 Under these elements, the scope of the integration is much
more defined and concrete. Countries signatory of this agreement like the
Philippines will expect drastic changes in the future. Will our country be
ready to embrace a new dawn of progress? Will we rise like the tiger
countries of the west or fall like the years of the dark ages?
Creating the bond between countries with different ideologies and
statuses is a work of continuous diplomacy and the unending economic
brainwashing of the legislators of such agreement. Taking into the discussion
are the different problems that bugged each member countries such as the
external issues of international conflicts and internal issues like the regional
problems of each state. Considering that the majority of ASEAN members
are below the economic margin of progressive states, this integration shall
be fazed of not just a single problem but may be bombarded of a whole
artillery of challenges. As the European Union continuous to recover from a
devastating economic fallout, the ASEAN block is one step closer in
achieving the promise of progress which the west experienced long before
we had made a move like the ASEAN integration. However, the intra-Asean
1 George Bernard Shaw
2 ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint, Page 6, 2008

trade is currently at very low level. It constitutes only about 25% of total
trade in goods of the Asean countries, and it is not expected to change
dramatically in the near future. For many years, the Asean countries have
been trading more with non-Asean countries compared to trading among
themselves by a ratio of three to one. Comparatively, the European Union
has an intra-trade level of 67.3% while the North American Free Trade
Association (NAFTA) has a record of 48.7% intra-trading.3 This is big gap
between the two regional blocks of the west and the east. The ASEAN
countries are not mirroring the economic infrastructure of the European
Union, thus it is safe to say that only the external columns of the system but
not the system itself is being integrated in our economic policies. This will
constitute to a far less ideal economic progress to souteast asian countries
that are still below the economic progress margin in which the Philippines
itself is a part thereof.
Since the ASEAN Six (Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Brunei) have long been under the global capitalist economy,
the integration is focused at the transitional economies of the newer
member states Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, often referred to
as the CLMV countries. The integration is not even a bid to regionalise the
economies of the ASEAN countries in the model of the European Union.
Rather, it is a schema whereby the ASEAN will be developed as a
production base for the needs of the global capitalist market, especially the
imperialist powers and the big industrialised nations. Even in terms of
economic benefits for the ASEAN region, whatever industrialisation that
comes out of the integration will be too minimal, too limited and will mainly
serve the big imperialist powers and corporations.This will also lead to
capital searching for the lowest labour cost in the region. Hence
industrialisation will be at the expense of the working classes in the region. 4
Immolating the efforts of the marginalized sector of our country will create a
far more devastating effects to the country as a whole. It will constitute to a
bargaining agreement of corporations to its employees whom in which the
exhaustion of human resources shall be experienced.
On Philippine Education, Culture and Society
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car;
3 ASEAN, as cited from Ed Tadems Aseans elusive integration, PDI, May 4, 2014
4 Filipino Socialist: ASEAN Integration means more Hell, Sonny Melencio, June 23 2014

but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. 5 In the
opening of the 2014-2015 School Year, the Department of Education
mandated that schools around the country should be implementing the K12
system. There was a lot of issues being raised in the first quarter of its
implementation and even in the start of the debate of whether or not the
Philippine society is ready to be rejuvenated with the new kind of system
foreign to our soil and culture. The new age of education was foreign in the
Philippines, it started when the Spanish came and when the Americans
continued and improved it. Are we ready to upgrade our system of
education, thus for several years we had slowly made progress in it. Our
literacy rate is high compared to other asian countries with the counrty
earning a total pecentage of 97.5%6 in the last quarter of 2013. Comparing
this statistic to other members of the ASEAN bloc, we are among the top
performing countries including Singapore and Malaysia. The rartionale
comes into the discussion when we incorporate the other ASEAN states in
the subject of education, who shall benefit the most? The system of
education, K12, in particular is still anew in the Philippine Educational
System. It is still in its first stage of execution where, our educational
institutions are still deciphering the full potential of the new system.
Universities, colleges and other educational institutions of lower in
level are gearing up for the year 2015 due to the said ASEAN Integration.
Some Universities shall now open its school year on a August and others on
a July which is not the normal opening for the past 30 or so years. We are
now copying the western kind educational system in which it is being
accepted in the new age of international agreements of Nations around the
world.
On the area of education, ASEAN 2015 brings both a possibility of
expansion and a limitation at the same time. While it offers an array of
opportunities for curricular reforms, there is also this threat that curricular
programs might be highly dictated by the demands of ASEAN 2015, thus
fashioning an educational paradigm where the economy takes center stage,
at the cost of alienating the human community in the process. It is, therefore,
a challenge to academic institutions to be able to generate thinking and
thoughts that criticize the existing economic apparatus, especially those that
5 Theodore Roosevelt
6 National Statistics Office December 2013

do not serve the human community and jeopardize the common good. 7
Philippine culture shall be put into a position where it will not be
comfortable due to the demands of time and progress. The most painful sight
is when our culture shall be demolished by the changing times where new
kind of hybrid culture will be embraced by the new generations of Filipinos.
The Filipino culture are different and distinct from each other, it
depends on the region or the society it belongs. It was a great adjusment
when foreigners are now living in the country, new laws have been passed
and new ordinances shall be legislated for future implementation. Will the
ASEAN Integration address the plague of poverty or will this system be
manipulated by corrupt individuals? Poverty alleviation, equity and human
development lie at the very core of a strong and resilient ASEAN SocioCultural Community. Poverty reduction is fundamental to the development
of the human potential, allowing people to participate fully in the
mainstream of economic life and contribute to society. A community of
caring societies in ASEAN can enhance the potential for production,
consumption and wealth creation, thus ensuring the benefits from economic
integration. ASEAN Member Countries will therefore strive, individually
and collectively, to build caring societies concerned with, committed to, and
capable of addressing fundamental issues of poverty, equity and human
development. Governments, private sector and civil society will work in
partnership to address these concerns.8 A continuity in developing our
economy to an upgrade to its specifics shall ideally promote social welfare
and progress to the less deprived individuals of our society yet, it is being
diverted to system where only a few shall benefit the product of such
system. The promise of this integration, hopefully is not far from what pen
and paper can show. Results must be achieved without any hindrance from
individual with personal and imperialistic ideologies.
Problems to be Acknowledged
On the surface, the skepticism seems understandable after all, it
took the Europeans almost half a century to construct their European
Community in the remarkable European integration process. Indeed, some
critics point out that many of the specified deadlines of AEC implementation
7 ASEAN 2015: An Opportunity or a Threat?, PAKIGHINABI: Conversations Series, Discussed by
Maria Louella A. Leh, January 2014
8 The ASEAN Secretariat, 2014

have been missed and some major initiatives have not taken off the ground.
For example, only 50 percent of the ASEAN Master Plan on Connectivity
has been realized due to a combination of financing shortfalls, poor
governance, corruption, and the inability of national governments to manage
international and interdepartmental coordination. However, ad hoc failures
in implementing certain specific AEC targets are not the biggest concern;
rather, it is the structural incapacity of the ASEAN to pull the AEC along.9
If the AEC were a train, then the ASEAN Secretariat would be the
locomotive. Yet, the ASEAN Secretariat itself lacks the financial and
intellectual resources to act in that capacity. Astonishingly, the resources at
its disposal have remained unchanged for 15 years, even though the regions
GDP had more than quadrupled. In 2013, the ASEAN Secretariats total
budget was $16 million, a trifling amount for an institution growing in
prominence with an ever expanding mandate and activities. In contrast, the
European Commission was operating with a budget for its own
administration of approximately $4.3 billion in 2012, and European
governments spent many times that figure to launch their own regional
project.10
Not surprisingly, the ASEAN Secretariat is significantly understaffed.
As of 2012, the ASEAN Secretariat employed about 300 people, while the
European Commission employed roughly 34,000. Given budget constraints,
a typical entry-level ASEAN headquarters professional is paid
approximately $3000 per month and this after major improvements in the
remuneration package in recent years. Thus, the ASEAN Secretariat
struggles to recruit well-educated staff from countries like Singapore and
Brunei, or to compete with other regional organizations, such as the Asian
Development Bank, which offers the brightest brains in the region a
minimum annual wage of $74,100.11
The AEC could perhaps still be achieved if the ASEAN member
states (AMSs) were genuinely united in striving for the common good, not
least the benefits derived from the envisaged economies of scale as a result
of a Southeast Asian single market. Unfortunately, delays in delivering AEC
9 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014
10 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014
11 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014

reflect one of the most daunting challenges facing ASEAN: the AMSs
inability or unwillingness to see themselves as a true single market. For
example, Indonesia has refrained from ratifying the ASEAN Multilateral
Agreement for Full Liberalization of Air Freight Services (MAFLAFS), to
protect its domestic aviation industry from regional competitors, primarily
from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Without the participation of
Indonesia, the single aviation market exists in name only and there is
certainly no open sky above ASEAN territory. Other examples abound.
Apparently, more often than not, narrower national interests trump a broader
regional vision, while short-term thinking outweighs long-term benefits.
Worse, it seems that the entrenched ASEAN Way of non-interference in
domestic affairs in politics risks being translated and relegated to nonrecognition of mutual interest in economics. In the absence of strong
regional institutions and sanction mechanisms for non-compliance and noncooperation, only peer pressure incentivizes AMSs to respect community
commitments.12
Last but not least, the slow progress and the obstacles encountered
in implementing the AEC is an inevitable result of the generalized awareness
deficit of ASEAN and AEC across the region citizens in Southeast Asia
know very little about ASEAN. An ASEAN Secretariat Survey in 2013
found that three out of four ASEAN citizens lack even a basic understanding
of ASEAN. Again, ASEAN can learn from the European experience in
promoting public awareness about the European Union (EU). To enable EU
citizens who are directly affected by EU legislation to understand the
decisions that have been made in Brussels, translations of EU legislation into
all 24 official languages and dissemination by national authorities are
required before the new laws come into force. Regardless of their language,
citizens of the EU at least know what their leaders are doing.13
For ASEAN, the only working language is English, a language that is not
cognate with any of the other languages in the region. The adoption of
English has been hailed by some as ASEAN Best's Policy; however, the very
low English proficiency in the region makes it very hard for ordinary
ASEAN citizens to follow regional agendas, which are often available in
English only. Admittedly, copying the EU approach will take time, cost
12 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014
13 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014

money, and entail complex regional and historical differences, but raising
ASEAN awareness with the more effective use of communication channels
would be conducive to the establishment of the AEC. By informing ASEAN
citizens about the enormous economic potential the AEC is capable of
unleashing, domestic lobbying pressure and public scrutiny would surge to
pressure AMS governments to keep their promises and honor their pledge to
build the AEC by 2015. In addition, greater public understanding of the AEC
would encourage more people to take advantage of what after all would be a
vibrant single market encompassing a GDP of $2.3 trillion and 600 million
people.14
To Sum It Up
Upon reading countless articles from authors of different newspapers,
papers, theses, researches, blogs, forums, etc. There are different sides of a
subject much more in case of the ASEAN Integration of 2015. The creation
of a much more free regional block can either help us propel to progress or
decimate our hopes of a new age in the Southeast Asia Region. Will security
and peace be easier to attain and diplomacy be the language of each Nation?
Will the settlements in disputes be addressed? Will the great wall of China
be trumpled down with the indispensable intervention of the United States of
America? Questions will continue to float until the dream of an ideal
economic progress is yet to be experienced.Progress is a nice word. But
change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.15

14 Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai, September 2014
15 Robert Kennedy

Bibliography:
Quotes
Robert Kennedy
Theodore Roosevelt
George Bernard Shaw
Books and Papers
Why the ASEAN Economic Community will Struggle, Ji Xianbai,
September 2014
The ASEAN Secretariat, 2014
ASEAN 2015: An Opportunity or a Threat?, PAKIGHINABI:
Conversations Series, Discussed by Maria Louella A. Leh,
January 2014
National Statistics Office December 2013
ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint, Page 6, 2008
ASEAN, as cited from Ed Tadems Aseans elusive integration,
PDI, May 4, 2014
Filipino Socialist: ASEAN Integration means more Hell, Sonny
Melencio, June 23 2014