I refer to the word “principle” as a concept that serves as a guide in the behaviour of a system, such as a regional organization like ASEAN. As mentioned, the need to maintain the centrality of ASEAN is enshrined in Article 1 of the ASEAN Charter. For me, this guiding principle should not just remain on paper; it has to be operationalized and employed actively in the daily conduct of ASEAN’s relations among Member States and with other partners, collectively covered by the word diplomacy.

The ultimate aim of diplomacy is to promote, defend and advance one’s own national interests in relations with other countries and at the same time, to pursue mutually beneficial ends with these countries by undertaking joint activities or championing mutually cherished values and principles. My instructions have always been clear according to this line, and I believe that my colleagues in the ASEAN family also had similar objectives. Now, in order for us to attain this objective, our brand of diplomacy requires mechanisms in which negotiations and discussions are to take place; these discussions should follow certain processes and procedures, its practitioners should employ a certain language or tone in relating with one another, and there should be a set of definite agenda and objectives to be accomplished. The permeating principle breathing into all these elements is ASEAN Centrality. As mentioned in my introduction, the mechanisms should be those led or created by ASEAN, the agenda should be that agreed upon by ASEAN, the participants should be those accepted by ASEAN, the processes and procedures should be those determined by ASEAN and the language or tone to be used should be that preferred by ASEAN. This view of ASEAN Centrality guided me in chairing ASEAN in 2017 and in participating in this Community throughout my tenure.

Conceptual Framework of the Jakarta Platform

For its conceptual framework, this book draws inspiration from proponents of analytical autoethnography, particularly that proposed by Leon Anderson (2006) who listed three characteristics of this conceptual framework whereby the researcher is a (i) a full member in the research group or setting; (ii) visible as such a member in published texts; and (iii) committed to developing theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena.

The year 2021 was the half-way point of the parliamentary term following the outcome of the 2019 general election, which had been (1) determined by an election formula favourable to Palang Pracharat, (2) monitored and enforced by the 2014–19 junta that Prayut had headed, (3) legitimized by an Election Commission that his junta had chosen, and (4) augmented by a junta-appointed Senate that helped select Prayut as prime minister. The cabinet was dominated by the same three personalities who had lorded over the country since the 2014 coup—Generals Prayut, Prawit Wongsuwan and Anupong Paochinda. Though Prayut was prime minister, he was not an elected member of parliament nor a member of any party. Prawit, deputy prime minister and defence minister under the junta, had taken only the deputy prime minister portfolio since 2019, though in June 2020 he also became Palang Pracharat party leader. Anupong was content with remaining only interior minister.

On 28 March, elections were held to select members of local municipal councils throughout the country. Then, on 28 November, there were elections for members of subdistrict councils within each province. The results of these elections, like those following the 20 December 2020 elections for Provincial Administrative Organization chairpersons and members, were favourable to traditional politicians connected to Palang Pracharat and Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai, while unfavourable to the Progressive Movement of Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a banned MP and former leader of the dissolved Future Forward party. The elections suggested that local rather than national politics were still prevalent among voters. But in March, Palang Pracharat won a by-election victory over the Democrats in a constituency considered a Democrat stronghold. Thus, Palang Pracharat seemed mostly on top of the political game.However, the party’s decision to even contest the poll—let alone its triumph—enraged the Democrats, given that the latter were Palang Pracharat’s coalition partner.

Meanwhile, on 17 March, nearly a year of attempts to amend the juntaenforced 2017 constitution were stopped when the draft bill to do so was rejected by parliament. This came after the Constitutional Court ruled that there needed to be a national referendum to legally amend the charter. In June parliament passed the Referendum Bill, facilitating future constitutional amendments.

Introduction

In the previous chapter Indonesia’s foreign policy under Suharto has been discussed to show the increasing role of the military and the President himself in the decision-making process. From the early 1980s, Suharto was the major foreign policy-maker. In this chapter, discussion focuses on the rise of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Indonesia’s role in this regional grouping. The role of the military and the President in Indonesia’s bilateral relations with individual ASEAN states (except Vietnam) will also be examined.

The Rise of ASEAN

It has been argued by many Indonesian leaders, at least prior to 1988, that ASEAN is the cornerstone of Indonesia’s foreign policy. In other words, the ASEAN states are crucial to Indonesia’s national interests, that is, its stability and security. It is not surprising, then, that Indonesia was instrumental in establishing this regional organization.

When Suharto came to power in 1966, he immediately ended the confrontation with Malaysia and began to show to the world, especially to the West, that he would abandon the aggressive policy of Sukarno. He was convinced that, with political stability, he would be able to develop Indonesia’s economy through foreign investment and foreign aid. The economy during the Sukarno era was seriously troubled. This partly accounted for the political instability of that time. Economic rehabilitation was perceived by the new leadership as a way to legitimize their new regime. Thus, the major concern of the new elite was to create political stability in the region, particularly among the non-Communist ASEAN states. ASEAN, as a regional organization, would serve this purpose. Only under stable conditions would Indonesia be able to develop economically.

As a matter of fact, ASEAN was not the first regional organization in Southeast Asia. As early as 1955, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was established by the United States to combat Communism in the region. But only two (namely, the Philippines and Thailand) out of its eight members were from Southeast Asia. This military pact failed to achieve its goal because the threat posed by Communism took the form of subversive activities and could not be solved through conventional military means. In addition, most of the members were not committed to the goal. Like the Communist states, anti-colonialist Indonesia was hostile towards this organization.

Overview of Global Value Chains and GVC Participation

International trade and production are increasingly structured around global value chains (GVC). Value chains can be defined as the totality of activities involved in the production process, which includes the design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of the product, as well as the provision of after-sales support for consumers. These different activities in the value chain can be carried out by the same or different companies. With more countries involved in these different stages, value chains have become global.

A country’s exports can be differentiated by whether these goods and services are produced with domestically sourced inputs or imported (foreign) value-added inputs (Figure 1). Furthermore, these exports can head to a foreign market either for final consumption or be used as intermediate manufacturing inputs in products that will then be exported to a third country (or the original country). A GVC analysis typically considers both the foreign value-added in a country’s exports (the upstream perspective) as well as the country’s exported value-added that were incorporated in other third-country exports (the downstream perspective).

To determine a country’s level of involvement in the GVC, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has developed a methodology based on three indicators. The first indicator measures the share of foreign value-added in exports. This reflects the portion of imported inputs used in a country’s exports and that is not included in its gross domestic product (GDP). The second indicator measures the domestic value-added in exports, or the proportion of domestically produced inputs in a country’s exports. This is the share of a country’s exports that contributes to GDP (i.e., domestic value-added trade share). The third indicator, the indirect value-added (DVX), measures the portion of a country’s exports that is involved in a multi-stage trade process, which can be calculated by adding the foreign value-added used in a country’s own exports and the value-added supplied to other countries’ exports.

The participation rate is a useful indicator showing the extent to which a country’s exports are integrated into international production networks, both upstream and downstream. Moreover, measuring a country’s GVC participation rate as a share of its exports will reveal how much the country relies on the GVC.

Why This Book?

On 20 March 2019, I represented the Philippines at a High-Level Dialogue on Indo-Pacific Cooperation hosted in Jakarta by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, and which was attended by Ministers, Senior Officials and Ambassadors of the eighteen countries belonging to the East Asia Summit (EAS). At the ASEAN Summit with the United States held in Manila in November 2017, President Donald Trump had first broached the concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIPS). Soon after, the so-called Quad (the United States, India, Japan and Australia) also expounded on the strategy, but downplaying any adversarial implications that might be associated with it in view of the impression that it was an isolationist strategy to exclude or contain an emerging China in the regional political and security architecture. From then on, much speculation and discussion have been generated on the so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and Indonesia, projecting herself as a leader in ASEAN and always zealous to surface ASEAN Centrality in the emerging regional security architecture, took pains to host this event. High level delegations from the eighteen EAS members attended the event. At that meeting which was the first ministerial-level forum to explore ideas on this emerging area of cooperation, almost all delegates stressed the importance of and support for ASEAN Centrality in the evolving political/security and economic architecture of the region which straddles the Indian and Pacific oceans, including the Member States of ASEAN. Yet, while prefacing their interventions with support for ASEAN Centrality, non-ASEAN countries expounded on their own particular initiatives on how they understood the Indo-Pacific approach, strategy or concept, including the FOIPS of the United States, the Belt and Road Initiative of China, the Quality Infrastructure Program of Japan, the Indo-Pacific Foreign Policy of Australia, and others, giving the impression that the participants did not have the same views as myself on what ASEAN Centrality meant and how it should be implemented. The implication, of course, is that their respective Indo-Pacific strategy or concept is the norm to be followed to ensure the political stability and economic prosperity of the region. After all the participants had spoken, as the Russian Ambassador and I were the most junior in the group in terms of rank, we were the last in the speaking order, but he spoke first before I did.

Finally, the litmus test that should test the relevance and continuity of ASEAN as a regional organization is the disposition of its people to identify themselves as citizens of ASEAN. Therefore, the last dimension of my definition of ASEAN Centrality is my ardent aspiration for the peoples of ASEAN and those around the world, to increase their level of awareness about ASEAN, and concomitant to this is the need to raise their sense of identity or belongingness to ASEAN. ASEAN is an important regional organization; it should be known to those living within it and those outside. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. I have frequently lamented the lack of awareness and sense of identity by the people of ASEAN about their own regional organization despite its fifty years of existence. In a Philippine Star article I wrote for the 52nd anniversary of ASEAN (2019), I cited the following:

My advocacy has been to make people become aware of ASEAN. ASEAN is not a perfect regional organization. Indeed, the many criticisms against it have factual foundations. Its member states are not the best exemplars of what the West would consider models of human rights promotion and protection.

Analytical Framework

Before I undertook writing this book, I had never heard of the term “autoethnography”. I have, of course, read a number of memoirs and autobiographies of diplomats recounting their experiences. In fact, during a seminar on the same topic where I presented the results of my study, many in the audience, including professors, had mistaken my work as an autobiography. I took pains then, as I do now, to make a differentiation between autoethnography and other genres of reflective writing.

Auto-what? was my initial response when a professor from the University of the Philippines Open University, Dr Jean Saludadez, suggested it to me. As I read up on the research method, I came to realize that this analytical framework was the perfect way to guide me in writing this book. I also came to the conclusion that many people were like me, either ignorant of the existence of such a beautiful research method or knowing about it but dismissing it as a second-rate framework that does not merit being placed side-by-side more formal, more “academic-sounding” approaches.

Autoethnography is a valid research method. I take inspiration from Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) who define autoethnography as a type of research that seeks to describe and systematically analyse the researcher’s personal experiences in order to understand cultural phenomena. They rationalize that autoethnography goes beyond data, but attempts to combine personal experiences with methodological tools. They popularized autoethnography as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience as a valid method of research. There should be no shame nor guilt in using personal narratives and perspectives in the quest for truth and knowledge, they say, and instead, regard the result of such a method as one that best approximates the truth, being based on personal experiences.

The Handbook of Autoethnography by Jones, Adams and Ellis (2016) distinguishes autoethnography from ordinary emotive writing by citing four of its characteristics, namely: (i) purposefully commenting on/ critiquing culture and cultural practices; (ii) making contributions to existing research; (iii) embracing vulnerability and purpose; and (iv) creating a reciprocal relation with the audience.

Careful not to be dismissed as another boring memoir of a retired diplomat, I take pains to incorporate the above-mentioned characteristics and goals into my book.

Economy Rebounded

The year started on an optimistic note. The inauguration of Joe Biden to be the forty-sixth President of the United States of America in January brought some predictability to US foreign policy in the Asia Pacific region. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines augmented the economic buoyancy as movement restrictions were gradually lifted, which gave a boost to the business sectors. Manufacturing and exports rebounded strongly, and Singapore’s recovery seemed well on track albeit below expectations. By the end of Q1 2021, small and mediumsize enterprises (SMEs) were looking beyond survival to explore emerging opportunities. Construction and built environment sectors were expected to grow between some S$23 billion and S$28 billion in 2021, up from S$21.3 billion in the year before. Economic growth was led by the digital revolution in information and communications and by sectors immune to COVID-19 disruptions like finance, insurance and professional services. In all, Singapore’s GDP grew by 5.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, resulting in an overall annual growth of 7.2 per cent in 2021.

Still, notwithstanding the improvement in business sentiment, Singapore’s economy was not out of the woods. For two years in a row, the city-state relied on its past savings to fund its pandemic measures, drawing S$1.7 billion from its fiscal reserves and setting aside over $9 billion in 2020 to fund the “COVID-19 Resilience Package” to support local businesses, according to the 2021 annual budget debate in Parliament. The air transport sector, one of the badly affected industries, received financial relief of S$870 million, a lifeline to maintain Singapore’s status as a regional transportation hub. The International Air Transport Association estimated that Singapore’s aviation sector provided 375,000 jobs before the pandemic. If tourism were considered, the spending would support another 152,000 jobs.

The financial assistance did not end there. Singapore entered a “heightened alert” phase in mid-May 2021 when the number of community cases rose exponentially. On 5 July 2021, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong announced in Parliament that an additional S$1.2 billion support package would be handed out to help SMEs pull through the difficult period. These included the Jobs Support Scheme that subsidizes the salaries of Singaporeans and other forms of tax rebates and special loans.

The ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (hereinafter referred to as “the Institute”) shall be established under Provision B.2.2.i of the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint. As a follow-up to the ASEAN Leaders’ Joint Statement on the Establishment of an ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation adopted on 8 May 2011, the Institute shall be an entity associated with ASEAN under Article 16 of the ASEAN Charter.

The Institute shall operate in accordance with the following Terms of Reference (TOR):

1. Headquarters

The headquarters of the Institute shall be in the Republic of Indonesia, hereinafter referred to as “the Host Country”, and shall be based in Jakarta.

2. Legal Personality

The legal personality of the Institute shall be established under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Host Country and the Institute.

3. Principles

The Institute would operate in accordance with the ASEAN Charter and be guided by the principles of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, inter alia:

• a. respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all ASEAN Member States;

• b. shared commitment and collective responsibility in enhancing regional peace, security and prosperity; and

• c. non-interference in the internal affairs of ASEAN Member States.

4. Mandate and Functions

4.1. Mandate

The Institute shall be the ASEAN institution for research activities on peace, conflict management and conflict resolution, as requested by ASEAN Member States. The Institute’s work will include, inter alia, promotion of those activities agreed in the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint and additional activities as agreed by ASEAN Member States.

4.2. Functions

The Institute may undertake, among others, the following activities:

Research

• • Undertake research and compile ASEAN’s experiences and best practices on peace, conflict management and conflict resolution as well as post-conflict peace-building, with the view to providing appropriate recommendations, upon request by ASEAN Member States, to ASEAN bodies;

• • Undertake studies to promote gender mainstreaming in peace building, peace process and conflict resolution; and

• • Study and analyse existing dispute settlement mechanisms in ASEAN with a view to enhancing regional mechanisms for the pacific settlement of disputes.

The year 2021 marked another tumultuous one for Malaysia. There was a third regime change in less than four years, combined with state elections in Melaka (Malacca) and Sarawak, while Malaysian society and the economy continued to struggle under the COVID-19 pandemic. By year’s end there was continued political instability caused by divisions in the Malay political class. The political tussle between the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) meant that, while the government was on paper a Malay-centric administration pursuing a Malay-First policy, there were deep-seated tensions as to which Malay party was the dominant one.

Fall of Muhyiddin and Rise of Ismail Sabri

On 15 August, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government under Bersatu’s Muhyiddin Yassin fell when UMNO pulled its support from the coalition. The PN had survived for a mere seventeen months. The origins of its fall lay in the way the PN came to power. In the 2018 elections, Bersatu was part of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, which successfully removed the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) from power. In February 2020, however, in what was dubbed the Sheraton Move, Muhyiddin led a Bersatu breakaway from the then-ruling PH government. Muhyiddin’s Bersatu faction then formed the Malay-centric PN government with UMNO and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS). The major incentives for UMNO to prop up the PN was that Zahid Hamidi, UMNO’s current party president, and Najib Razak, Malaysia’s former premier and Zahid’s predecessor, were both on trial for corruption, money laundering and other charges. In addition, half a dozen other UMNO leaders had also been charged during the PH administration. This group, commonly known as the “court cluster”, were probably of the opinion that should UMNO become part of the new government many of these criminal charges would be set aside or dropped. Under Malaysian law the attorney general can offer discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA). In December 2020, a member of the “court cluster”, former minister Tengku Adnam, was given a DNAA in his corruption trial. Muhyiddin had claimed in August 2021, during the twilight days of his premiership, that he had refused to bow to pressure from certain politicians to intervene in their ongoing court cases.