HONG KONG -- It is almost impossible to see the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' ninth summit in Bali earlier this month as having regenerated the regional body, even though that was the objective asserted by the participants.
On the contrary, as ASEAN bureaucrats handed out numerous press statements, speeches, framework agreements, joint declarations, accession instruments and memorandums of understanding -- but then uniformly refused to answer press questions or to provide informative briefings -- ASEAN aptly illustrated its own political decay. Amid this mix of verbosity and official obtuseness, it was hardly surprising that the ASEAN summit received relatively little coverage in the outside world.
Two other clues help explain ASEAN's increasing impotence and inability to attract positive international attention:
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