ASEAN unity
Recent Philippine visitor – Malaysia’s House of Representatives Speaker Johari Abdul, is calling for more unity and cooperation among the 11-member nations/states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, which comprises almost 700 million people.
The ASEAN is a regional group composed of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, but has agreed to accept Timor Leste as its 11th member. It is a regional grouping that aims to promote economic and security cooperation.
Johari is, thus, urging the formidable regional and economic bloc to “take advantage of that population,” citing further that the ASEAN region “has almost everything. We have land, we have water, we have people, and we have the money. There is no reason why we cannot be a world producer of food, either rice or other crops. Why should we be depending on the others? So if we can get together, our experts can get together...as I said, we have land, we have God given sunrise, we have people, we have water, we have almost everything.”
But, he stressed, “What we need is courage to sit down and talk about food security, so that we not only become self-sustaining...but more importantly, become the exporter of some of the food stuff that counts... the entire world...saving the planet.”
He also cited the ASEAN region’s capabilities in terms of innovations, transforming digitalization, including vocational training and artificial intelligence...we have to innovate, we have to improve and we have to share information and experiences that we have...encouraging our academicians to cross borders...and talk about it... ensuring that this century is going to be the Asian Century, and I believe our economies are going to grow very fast with what is happening in China, in Korea and ASEAN.”
In fact, in Johari’s opinion, the ASEAN region is “at the front...the greatest economy in the world that probably if we can put our resources together, our technology together, our money together and our courage together... we can elevate our position together” by also collaborating with emerging economies like China and India.
He acknowledged the tricky