Solidarity for Asian People's Advocacy (SAPA) made its second submission on ASEAN Economic Community to the Eminent Persons Group during its 4th consultation in Singapore on 28 June. SAPA's submission focused on (1) perspectives on economic regionalism; (2) laying down 11 principles for Institutions for regional policy and cooperation; and (3) proposed mechanism for moving forward. FORUM-ASIA's Rashid Kang attended the meeting.
Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy (SAPA) made its second submission on the ASEAN Economic Community to the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) during its 4th consultation in Singapore on 28 June.
SAPA submission focused on (1) perspectives on economic regionalism; (2) laying down 11 principles for Institutions for regional policy and cooperation; and (3) proposed mechanism for moving forward.
Like SAPA’s first submission, it is a result of a process of consultation with SAPA's regional and national network members in Southeast Asia, culminating with a face-to-face meeting in Singapore from 26-27 June 2006. A total of 22 SAPA members, including the FORUM-ASIA Secretariat and members’ organisations from Malaysia and Singapore, joined the whole SAPA process. For the first time, trade unions also joined this process.
This time, 28 members of the EPG attended the official consultation in Singapore with civil society organisations (CSOs) from the region. An interesting exchange with CSO representatives on people-to-people engagement ensued.
Philippines EPG member Fidel Ramos said that he preferred the words “people empowerment” than “pro people” in the charter, because in his views it represented a top-down elite approach. Some EPG members however expressed their views in more subtle ways by throwing back the question on how do CSOs propose to implement a “pro-people” policy in the ASEAN charter.
Such discussions in fact are not new. In recent months, the debates on CSOs and ASEAN engagement have been in the limelight, especially among policy advocates and groups who have been consistently engaging ASEAN. Thanks to the windows of opportunity opened up by the EPG process on the ASEAN charter and several ASEAN initiatives in the last 2-3 years.
So far, there had been four meetings by the EPG on the ASEAN Charter. It was learned that there will be three more EPG working meetings till the end of December 2006 which will focus on the ASEAN Social Cultural Community, Institutional Building and a final drafting meeting.
However, CSOs were tentatively informed that they will not be engaged for the last two meetings on Institutional Building and the final drafting meeting.
At the moment, the SAPA pre-meeting on socio-cultural cooperation is being arranged by the Southeast Asia Committee for Advocacy (SEACA), with Migrant Forum Asia as host partner, from 12-13 August in Manila. SAPA is at the moment awaiting confirmation of a dialogue by regional organisations with Fidel Ramos, Philippine EPG member, on 14 August.
Earlier, on 25 June, FORUM-ASIA presented its proposal on the need to formalise SAPA's modalities and mechanisms to facilitate better communication and coordination among members emerged. Rashid Kang attended the meeting in Singapore.
