ASA and MAPHILINDO: Forerunners of ASEAN

(By Amen Quizon-Letana, Flordeliz Guilangue Madrid, and Belinda Sales Canlas)

AS A STUDENT of Southeast Asian Studies, I am privileged to use my dispassionate lens to assess the conditions prevailing during the post WW II era encouraging our leaders to form the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) and the Greater Malayan Confederation or MAPHILINDO (for Malaya, the Philippines (PH), and Indonesia), and joining the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).  

They were faced with serious challenges, even a “clear and present danger” to their fledgling democracies, hence, the need to come up with hard decisions. It is easier for us to critique now, in hindsight, however, the realities at the time were overwhelmingly different and complex.

ASA, for example, produced the Bangkok Declaration of 1961, held meetings, had an organizational structure, among others whilst MAPHILINDO, that would have initiated a brotherhood among countries of Malay stock, had started to shape. These are too big to brush away. The intent was there but the timing was not.

Jealousies, suspicions, and competition, as pundits observed, characterized the leaders of Southeast Asia then. But was it unexpected given their new independence and the challenge to progress at such trying times?

Meanwhile, I am impressed with the vision of these great leaders, human frailties notwithstanding. They were statesmen regardless of political inclinations. True, their leadership would be subjected to the crucible of fire, so to speak, as history is written and rewritten, still, what they have done could not be matched!

But like the wise said, history will tell if your leadership was sterling or deserved to be swept into the dust bin of oblivion. – Belinda Sales Canlas

***  

They say that takeoff and landing are the 2 most important moments during an airplane flight. Proper takeoff is critical to determine whether an aircraft would make it in the skies or not. A swift landing means lives spared and livelihoods intact.

In a person’s life, landing and takeoff could be likened to birth and death, or the beginning of a career and retirement, or the start of a project and seeing its outcome.

Following the same analogy, we can say that several attempts at “takeoff” had been done for the realization of an integrated Southeast Asia. We have learned a great deal about it in SEATO (1954), ASA (1961), and MAPHILINDO (1963), and their predecessors – the events where these organizations themselves “took off” – such as the Asian Relations Conference (1947), the Bandung Conference (1955), and the Non-Aligned Movement (1961), among others.

History considers these events and organizations as failures, but I believe that the learnings from these undertakings served as useful implements for the ASEAN forerunners, and equipped them to achieve the kind of takeoff that the organization did almost 55 years ago.

Our lands and waters are our one big cockpit. Our shared cultural heritage is our compass. Our collective colonial experiences are our manual. Our vision of a more peaceful, prosperous, free peoples is our fuel: parts well-conditioned and ready to continue propelling, fortuitously without landing in sight. – Amen Quizon-Letana

***  

Southeast Asia today is the lesson of our nation’s yesterday. The necessity to survive drove nations to take unprecedented steps to ensure that the struggles of yesterday will not be put to waste. It clearly challenged the nations in their quest for nation-building and national security. It can be remembered that nations who courageously took the initiative to fulfill the dream of a united Southeast Asia were dealing with internal problems, not to mention that these nations were poor, too.

Implicitly, the aims to unify the region through these regional organizations failed not only because of the territorial claims and woes of domination, but it could also be because these nations were not yet ready to build an organization and assume the bigger responsibility and commitment it entails. These nations were also barely exposed to the concept of cooperation making it harder for them to reach an agreed means to cooperate. Clearly, previous members were not a champion at it.

Conflicting views regarding the significance of SEATO, ASA, and MAPHILINDO are prevalent, some of which were left unrecorded. However, it’s best to remember that the demise of these organizations has become a steppingstone for ASEAN to prosper, the ASEAN established by the weakest states, now rubbing elbows with the world’s superpowers through its various mechanisms.

Let’s revisit the past.  It carries too many lessons for our now. – Flordeliz Guilangue Madrid

***

Writer can be reached at belindabelsales@gmail.com. Twitter @ShilohRuthie./PN