Johan B. P. Maramis:
When I was with the Indonesian European
University, I received a call one day from Mr. Kharis Suhud, Speaker of the
Indonesian Parliament and People’s Congress. It was on July 1990.
I happened to know Mr. Kharis Suhud
from the time he served as Indonesian ambassador to Thailand and concurrently
Indonesian representative to ESCAP in the mid-1971. Mr. Kharis Suhud had called to inform me that he wanted to
nominate me as the Indonesian candidate for the post of Secretary General of
the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary organization (AIPO).
I was very surprised by his offer and
jokingly remarked that he might have called the wrong party by mistake since I
have been in retirement for about ten years. Yet I found it a great honour to
be considered despite having been away from official duty for such a long
period.
As it turned out, I was one of the five
candidates to be considered for the position; ultimately the Indonesian
parliament selected me. At AIPO’ s General Assembly session in Singapore in
September 1990, I was officially appointed as the first Secretary General of
AIPO for a period of three years.
Promoting the goals of AIPO
The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary
Organization consists of the Parliaments of five ASEAN countries, namely
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. AIPO was formally
established on 2 September 1977 with the general goal of enhancing friendship
and mutual co-operation in matters affecting Southeast Asia in order to promote
regional peace, stability and prosperity. Specially AIPO intents to promote
closer inter-parliamentary co-operation among the ASEAN member countries and
closer contact and understanding among their members.
In promoting the goals of ASEAN as
stipulated in ASEAN Declaration of August 8, 1967, AIPO believes in the need to
concert common efforts toward giving concrete substance to brotherhood and
friendship as well as meeting the challenges faced by society in this modern
age. Its aims itself to address these common problems through studies,
discussions and recommended solutions.
AIPO was organized to address world
problems that are growing in scope. Its Working Committee and General Assembly
are held every year with the venue selected alphabetically on rotational basis
among member’s counties.
Brunei although an ASEAN member is not
included in AIPO since its government has no parliament. However it was
accorded special observer status. Besides ASEAN members, other countries having
observer status in the larger ASEAN forum are invited in AIPO as observers.
The organs of AIPO are
the General Assembly, Working committees and the permanent Secretariat. The
Speaker of the parliament of the host country becomes President until the
closing ceremony of the conference in the host country. Discussions in the
General Assembly usually cover subjects in the political and security,
economic, social and organizational fields.
The functions
of the Working Committee are among others, to propose the agenda of the General
Assembly to clear and submit draft resolutions and other recommendations and to
prepare the Joint Communiqué.
The Permanent
Secretariat of which I became its first head, has a number of functions. It
served as the central administrative office, prepares materials to be submitted
to the Working committee and General Assembly, and carries out all the
responsibilities assigned to it by the General Assembly. The work of the
Secretariat was previously handled by the host parliament. The annual budget is
in the amount of US 150.000 thousand dollars equally divided among the five
members, which worked out to US$ 30.000 per parliament per year. The AIPO
Secretariat number 8 which consisted of myself, the Deputy Secretary General,
an administrative officer and clerical staff.
The four
committees in AIPO discuss a range of issues covering their respective fields.
In the political field issues which are usually discussed include international
and regional political and security matters, the endorsement and review of AEAN
initiatives such as the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (Zopfan) the
question of regional co-operation and others. The economic committee reviews
the progress on intra-ASEAN economic co-operation and issues such as
co-operation in tourism, whereas the social committee studies issues such as
the protection of migrant workers, protection of children and public health.
The organization Committee discusses internal organizational matters.
It was
obvious that with such limited staff and financial resources at its disposal,
the AIPO secretariat could only perform peripheral functions such as notifying
non-members, including governments and international organisations, about
AIPO’S decisions and recommendations of the General Assembly; following up specific recommendations addressed to the
governments and international organizations;
acting as the official channel of communication, maintaining closer
contact with ASEAN secretariat and preparing for the General Assembly session.
Improvements in function and structure
To improve the effective functioning of
the Secretariat in my first session as Secretary General, I proposed to specify
and or enlarge the secretariats function to include the appropriate facilities
for the proper functioning of the central administration office such as a
computer network and a central library to establish a database of pertinent and
timely information.
I further suggested to
add a study research function for the secretariat with a view to conduct
analytical research in areas of interest of AIPO, to initiate practical
regional co-operation programs and to draw up short-, medium- and long-term
programs for AIPO.
Another role that the secretariat
should play was to act as the operational arm of AIPO, which would involve the
implementation, co-ordination and monitoring of AIPO decisions and resolutions,
in addition to servicing the committees and the General Assembly.
I also suggested changes in the
organization structure to add among others a Standing Committee to consider the
report of the study committees, and to prepare the agenda and documentation for
the General Assembly.
My recommendations were considered
premature since these could only be taken up at the end of my term. I also
suggested mobilizing extra-budgetary resources that I had done successfully at
ESCAP to add more staff and to finance important programs in case the AIPO
members were not willing to increase their contribution. This proposal was also
turned down since AIPO wants to keep the Secretariat deliberately small and
less prominent. In this connection it may be recalled that it took the ASEAN
secretariat nearly 25 years before the member governments resolved to expand
its role and accord the Secretary General the rank of minister. It was feared
that the secretariat would become too powerful. I thus had to work within this
staffing and financial constraint and with limited mandate.
After having observed my first AIPO
session in Singapore, and based on my experience in Bangkok, I decided to make
certain changes. I had first to
popularised AIPO. Frankly, I had only a vague idea of what AIPO stood for, when
Mr. Kharis Suhud selected me as candidate for the post. One of my first task
was to issue a general information pamphlet clarifying the aims and purpose of
AIPO, and to distribute a quarterly publication concerning parliamentary news
on relevant topics in the ASEAN countries. I made effective use of the print
and broadcast media and gave press interviews particularly when the AIPO
session took place in Jakarta in 1992. Unfortunately however I had to
discontinue those efforts because of lack of funds I also had to prepare AIPO’s
annual sessions more efficiently.
As there were practically no supporting
documents available at these sessions, the discussions were not clearly
focussed on the subject at hand. There were also many items on the agenda that
due to time constraints could only be discussed superficially. I tried to
streamline the agenda but could not get away with dropping some items that the
previous session had requested to continue. I also introduced an annotated
agenda for every subject. The documentation was, however, quoted from official
sources in particular from the official ASEAN meetings, since I had no means of
conducting analytical studies.
I had to limit myself to only a few
activities that I could implement usefully within the short period of my 3-year
tenure.
I arrange more inter-parliamentary
visits as well as visits with parliaments outside AIPO. In fact I successfully
organized a visit to Thailand, a member of AIPO, and also to the Republic of
China, Vietnam and Laos, all are non-members. Two meetings with the European
Parliament, one of which was convened in Jakarta and the other one in
Strassbourg, the seat of the European parliament, took place during my term.
I was also invited by the Konrad
Adenauer stiftung foundation to visit Germany to learn more about their
parliamentary system and to provide more information about AIPO.
My deputy, myself and another
secretariat member of the Philippines congress were very well received and had
an extended tour in Germany. In view of the success of those early visits, the
General Assembly suggested further visits to the Asian-Pacific region such as
North and South Korea, Myanmar and Cambodia. Furthermore I had to work for
further harmonization for legislation among the
ASEAN members. I concentrated on
non-controversial issues that would constitute a framework for common
legalization to be enacted by the respective member parliaments.
Some important achievements.
Drug legislation
What I considered to be remarkable
achievements were the consensus on two subjects during my terms of office.
The first one concerned drug
legalization. With the active support of the Malaysian parliament, AIPO was
able to agree on a number of important issues that would constitute the
framework for legislation on narcotic and drug abuse and rehabilitation. These
included stringent laws that would effectively combat the production of
narcotic, curb drug trafficking and anti drug abuse, and which would serve as a
deterrent to organized drug syndicates.
Human rights
The second touched upon human rights
that formed the basis for a study committee meeting organized by the Indonesian
parliament.
This study committee
in turn was able to draft an ASEAN Declaration on Human rights that was
subsequently approved by AIPO. The Declaration stressed, inter alia, that human
rights were indivisible and comprise civil, political, social and cultural
rights, and should not be addressed selectively but must be promoted without
distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. The Declaration also
stressed that human right has two balancing aspects, those with respect to
rights and freedom of the individual and those that stipulated obligations of
the individuals to society and state. The universal promotion and of human
rights should be placed in the context on international co -operation based on
the concept of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference
in the internal affairs of states. Development was also considered as a
fundamental right. Growth and stability were linked by an unremitting search
for a balance between the claim of the individual and those of the community to
which the individual belonged and through which many individual rights were
realized.
Subsequently in pursuance to my
efforts, AIPO at is session in Manila in 1994 adopted the AIPO Declaration on
Environment and Protection of Wild life that was drafted by a study committee
in Jakarta. It also accepted the offer of the Malaysian AIPO national group to
draft common legalisation pertaining to environment issues.
The General Assembly also agreed to
establish an Ad-Hoc committee to promote mutual understanding and the exchange
of information of the laws of ASEAN member states which Singapore offered to
host.
At nearly every General Assembly
session the question of an Asian parliament was raised but regularly postponed,
since some of the members were of the view that an Asian Parliament at this
juncture was premature. The Philipppines however persisted and at the session
in Manila, the Assembly mandated the Committee on Organizational Matters to
find ways and means to strengthen legislative co-operation and inter-action in
AIPO and ASEAN and to promote the evolution of AIPO as the core of eventual of
ASEAN legislature in the future.
An ASEAN Parliament should be the final
objective of AIPO. By exerting more efforts on the question of harmonization of
legalisation on a wide range of issues in member parliaments, this objective
may indeed be achieved one day.
Because of the obvious constraints of a
small staff and limited financial resources, and restricted mandate, I could
not accomplish as much as I have wanted in a relatively short period of three
years.
I believe, however, that I had
contributed to the promotion of closer inter-parliamentary co-operation among
the parliamentarians within and outside AIPO, while assisting in the general
goal of AIPO to enhance friendship and co-operation in matters of mutual
concern.
Posted April 28, 2002 -
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