Details

FORUM ON

REGIONAL STRATEGIC AND POLTICAL DEVELOPMENTS

DEMOCRACY, CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND THE NEW REGIONALISM

IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Singapore

Southeast Asia is in the midst of momentous changes. As Indonesia heads into the 2009 Presidential election, its fourth after the Suharto era, Indonesian democracy has reached a new threshold. In Malaysia, the March 2008 general election saw the National Front government lose its two-thirds majority and the emergence of the new People’s Alliance. Malaysia is seemingly on the cusp of a two-party system. Is racial politics being replaced by a new multicultural sensitivity? Will the primordial forces of race, religion and ethnicity return to overshadow the political process? Post-Thaksin Thailand has witnessed, after a brief military rule, some democratic ferment but also continued political uncertainty. In Myanmar, the recently concluded controversial referendum on its constitution apparently signals a movement towards elections. Just how enduring are these political developments for democracy in the region?

Amidst these political developments is the disaster wrought by Cyclone Nargis on the people of Myanmar, with the terrifying earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, coming close on its heels. Both these events are reminders that national crisis and disasters of this sort are often beyond the pale of national instrumentalities of control and management. What roles then do global and regional humanitarian efforts play in such situations and what would be the social and political ramifications of such horrendous events? Deepening the crisis caused by such natural disasters in the region is the unprecedented galloping food prices in the region and across the globe, raising the invariable question of whether food security, along with human security, should now be top policy concerns.

Increasingly regional integration is being seen as also a bottom-up process which involves ASEAN peoples and civil society. The ratification process of the ASEAN Charter which among other things will provide for a more rules-based and integrated ASEAN may itself see the inculcation of a new sensibility to the issues of human and non-traditional security in Southeast Asia. Will the emergence of this new regionalism in ASEAN provide some directions and solutions to these new emerging regional challenges?

Some specific issues for consideration:

Democracy and Elections

•Referendum for a new constitution in Myanmar; why did the voting go ahead in the face of the cyclone disaster? What can we expect a new constitution to augur?

•Re-emergence of people-power politics in post-Thaksin Thailand and implications for Thai politics and democracy

•New political winds in Malaysia – two-party system and receding of racial politics

•The 2009 Presidential election in Indonesia: what would influence voters’ choice?

Crisis Management and Food Security

•Cyclone Nargis and disaster management in Myanmar

•Food crisis and food security in Southeast Asia

•Regional mechanisms for disaster management

ASEAN

•The ASEAN Charter and future regional cooperation

•How would a bottom-up approach to regionalism be instituted in ASEAN?

•The Charter and a more people oriented ASEAN

The RSPD Forum will bring together regional experts to address the above pressing concerns of our times.