How can we trust Asean integration?

THE Asia News Network website posted this headline on March 11: “Asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] displays solidarity as region suffers.” The commentary accompanying it noted that Malaysia’s neighbors responded without hesitation to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying this “is testing relations and cooperation among Asean friends and partners.”

Differences, if any, were set aside in order to focus on finding the plane. Each Asean member gathered whatever resources it has at its disposal to help, even if it has nothing at gain from it, except more goodwill. This is true for the Philippines, which had no citizens onboard that plane.

It was a proper and humane response to a baffling incident that any country would appreciate and any regional bloc would expect from its members. But as the days pass, a darker side to the search-and-rescue effort emerges that may have long-term consequences.

Like business relationships, the progress to Asean economic integration—which will take a major leap next year—is based on trust. In the past, regional partnerships have been secured with threats, with one country forcing a partnership to serve its objectives. The Roman Empire comes to mind; so does the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the early 1940s, when Japan “liberated” its neighbors from Western economic influence.

The Asean integration plan is modeled, in part, on the efforts of European nations to create the European Union (EU). While the Asean initiative has yet to go as far as EU integration has, the principles are basically the same. Some measure of national sovereignty is being sacrificed by individual countries in the hopes that a union will provide more economic benefits than every nation trying to earn them by itself.

EU members have discovered that trust is a primary foundation of the union. After the banking and financial crisis struck Greece, it was learned that Athens had lied about its financial affairs in order to join the EU. The Greek government understated its debt to reach the fiscal benchmarks necessary for full EU membership. Other EU nations suffered as a result of that.

While other Asean members were spending huge sums of money—and putting lives on the line—searching for Flight MH370, it appeared that the Malaysian government was not completely honest with them. Consider: The search was concentrated on the last-known point of contact, but it turns out the Malaysian authorities knew full well that the plane had already turned westward and reached Malaysia’s eastern coast.

Are the other Asean members going to express confidence that their co-members will be trustworthy in dealing with some details of Asean integration, such as passport and employment-credential control? Are we going to be comfortable with the potential integration of the region’s stock markets, with the regulators of other nations auditing their companies’ financial records?

The Bible says if a person cannot be trusted with minor matters, how much more with major ones. Malaysia has failed the first practical Asean integration test. –BusinessMirror Editorial