Myanmar gets support to lead ASEAN

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 11/01/2011

Support has grown for Myanmar’s potential to chair ASEAN after Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa visited the country last week.

University of Indonesia international relations specialist Hariyadi Wirawan said Monday he always believed that a persuasive approach was the best way in dealing with Myanmar.

“[Marty’s] visit to Myanmar was to make sure that democratization is ongoing in Myanmar as suggested by ASEAN,” he told The Jakarta Post.

“Every little step Myanmar takes during that process should be appreciated.”

On the sidelines of his trip, Marty said Myanmar’s political reforms looked “irreversible” and put the country on course to chair ASEAN, while urging the United States and the European Union to ease sanctions as the embargoes had done more harm than good in the country, Reuters reported.

The US and the EU have imposed a number of sanctions on Myanmar due to a long record of human rights abuses in the country, although the EU claimed earlier this year that it had lifted some of the sanctions.

“I wish to believe and I get the sense that they are meant to be irreversible,” Marty said of the reforms as quoted by Reuters. “I did not get any indication that the process will stop.”

The ministry’s director for East Asia and Pacific affairs Dewi Savitri Wahab said the minister would further discuss the results of his trip with other ASEAN foreign ministers while taking into ccount dynamics developing outside the regional grouping.

After two decades the Myanmar government held its first elections in December last year, albeit imperfectly, as admitted by Indonesia. The new Myanmar government, however, has called for peace with ethnic minority groups, has offered easing media control, released about 200 political prisoners and has been more communicative with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Hariyadi said Marty’s trip to the restive country showed that Myanmar’s democracy was encouragingly developing in an ASEAN way, but that did not necessarily satisfy the US and the EU because they had stricter standards in terms of democracy and human rights values.

“What the US and European countries want is instant changes in Myanmar. They will never be satisfied with small improvements,” he said.

Burma Partnership coordinator Khin Omar has urged Indonesia not to allow Malaysia’s ASEAN chair bid to pass because reforms Malaysia had carried out were merely cosmetic.

Another international relations analyst, Bonggas Adi Chandra, said he supported the Indonesian government and ASEAN should give Myanmar incentives rather than punishments.

“By giving Myanmar our trust, we are actually pushing Myanmar to accelerate its improvement in democracy and human rights by 2015, when the ASEAN Community is officially effective,” he told the Post.