Asean might

PINOY KASI

Asean might
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:07am (Mla time) 01/17/2007

THROUGHOUT the 12th Asean Summit, we kept hearing about Asean being “One Caring and Sharing Community.” My initial reaction was that it sounded a bit too much like an advertisement for a real estate subdivision, but then it did get me thinking, too, about how serious we are in Asean about this “caring” and “sharing” bit.

For starters, that would mean more efforts to understand each other, in this 21st century. We Filipinos may have to put in a bit more effort, being perhaps the most marginalized, culturally, from the other countries in the region. Often described as the most “Westernized,” we seem to have little interest in the cultures of our neighbors. Over at the University of the Philippines, I regularly ask students what foreign languages they’re taking, and rarely do they mention one of the Asian languages. If they do, it’s Japanese and, among Asean languages, a handful of them opt for Bahasa Indonesia.

But it isn’t just a matter of learning other countries’ languages and history. Even at the level of popular culture, we seem to scoff at our neighbors. Last year, while going through a small mall in Kuala Lumpur, I was greeted by life-sized posters of Jericho Rosales and Kristine Hermosa in front of video shops, advertising their TV soap “Ngayong Nandito Ka,” with Bahasa Malaysia subtitles. The VCD box had a come on: “Filipino Most Romantic Couple.”

That wasn’t an isolated phenomenon. Throughout Southeast Asia there’s interest in pop music and videos of the region. You’ll find Thai movies in Singapore’s Changi Airport shops, and Vietnamese movies in Bangkok’s DVD stores. Many years ago, Indonesian friends were already humming Freddie Aguilar’s “Anak” to me, and last year, one Indonesian professor asked how he could get more Filipino “acoustic” songs.

Colorful past

More than popular culture though, there’s much to uncover in a shared past. Certainly, regional trading isn’t a new thing. Even before our contact with Western colonizers, our region was already a hub of economic activity for centuries. We were trading in all kinds of commodities, from forest food products to gold. The wealthy "indios" in the Philippines were already importing Chinese ceramics, original ones from China as well as imitations (pirated copies) from Vietnam.

Where there’s trading, there’s cultural exchange. Islam gained a foothold in the Philippines perhaps less from direct contact with Arabs than with those already converted in neighboring areas. To give just one example, the sultanates of Tondo and Brunei already had special relations, similar to contemporary “sister cities” arrangements. We borrowed Arab words, many associated with religion and philosophy, again filtered through Malay and Old Javanese. No VCDs then, but I’m sure there was an exchange of folk tales, including a few love stories thrown in for good measure.

Anthropology, archaeology and linguistics offer many clues to our shared heritage. One reason Filipinos might feel marginalized in the region is that we still think of mainland Southeast Asia as being culturally very different from us. If we find affinity, it is in Indonesia and the Philippines, which are more “Austronesian” in language and culture.

But we forget there are also Austronesian groups in Vietnam, with cultures that are very similar to those of the Philippines and Indonesia. While going through the exhibits at Hanoi’s Ethnological Museum, I was struck by how similar their material culture and rituals were to those of Indonesia and the Philippines, from rice terraces to the slaughtering of water buffalo (carabao) in rituals.

Here’s something else that’s intriguing: Unlike most of the other strongly patriarchal groups in mainland Southeast Asia, the Austronesians in Vietnam are matrilineal, that is, they trace their ancestries through the mother’s side. I say that’s intriguing because it reminds us of how women may have more space, more power, in our part of the world, compared to other Asian regions. In fact, Western accounts of the region during the pre-colonial and early colonial period noted how “free” women were and actively engaged in trade and politics, mainly diplomacy.

Democratic future

We look to the past so we can move into the future. That applies as well to our search for some common “Asean values.” Sadly, there’s been too much talk about how different we are from “Westerners,” including arguments that such concepts as democracy and human rights and women’s rights are imported and inappropriate.

It’s time we mined our history, our languages, to show how we do have notions of rights, and how central they are to our cultures. I keep thinking of the 10th century copper plate found in Laguna, certifying that someone named Namwaran had paid off his debts and was therefore now a free man, together with his wife and family. We had certain norms in place around governance and citizenship, if we might use those terms loosely.

I sometimes read about how Asean might become like the European Union, with a European Parliament and a common currency, the euro. But the road to that parliament and currency has not been easy, marked by often acrimonious debates. That has included debates around shared “European values” that will be reflected in the parliament’s legislation. But the Europeans do consider it important to discuss these values, which again often involves going back in history. Their emphasis on rights, emerging from the Enlightenment and liberalism, has been translated into a strict requirement that any country seeking entry to the EU must abolish the death penalty.

We need to think about that in Asean, too. There has been much debate, for example, on Burma and its military dictatorship, and whether Asean has the right to sanction that country. Yet, the region tends to look up to Singapore, which we admire for its efficiency and progress and which we attribute to Lee Kuan Yew’s “authoritarianism.” I’d be careful there: Lee was light years away from other dictators in the region, including our own Ferdinand Marcos, coming more closely to a long tradition of god-kings in our region, mixed with some of the city-state democratic tradition from ancient Greece.

Patriarchal and feudal, yes, but the god-king tradition also had a strong sense of accountability, which you still find today in the Thai monarchy and political system: fail the people and you lose your mandate to rule. We can build on that as we continue to debate on how democracy is to be nurtured in our region.

Asean started out mainly as an anti-communist bloc of nations. Today, it is mainly a vehicle for economic relations, sidestepping politics and culture. Asean might is a “might” -- meaning a potential, which depends so much on our coming to terms with our past and our present. Once we learn to tap into our shared culture -- cognizant of both its strengths and frailties—we can move forward in tandem, both politically and economically.