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Thursday, August 25, 2011

TIMOR LESTE’S INTEGRATION INTO ASIA IS RIPE

TIMOR LESTE’S INTEGRATION INTO ASIA IS RIPE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Certain quarters among Asia’s continental stakeholders are of the opinion that it is ripe for Timor Leste to be integrated into the Asian economies. I am in complete agreement with the same stakeholders, even as I am of the opinion that the more prosperous Asian countries should land a greater hand in helping out the new independent state to accelerate development.

I also hold the standpoint that Timor Leste, which lies to the east of Indonesia, should someday become a full member of the ASEAN. It must first of all prove its own capabilities to achieve a relative state of political stability and move forward to modernizing its institutions and enabling policy environment.

Incidentally, the Asian Development Bank has been a lead stakeholder in aiding Timor Leste move towards the direction of integration into Asia. Below is a report on the ADB initiatives being undertaken toward such end.

[Philippines, 11 August 2011]

Source: http://beta.adb.org/news/president-kuroda-timor-leste-should-boost-integration-share-asias-success

President Kuroda: Timor-Leste Should Boost Integration to Share in Asia's Success

12 Jul 2011

DILI, TIMOR-LESTE – Timor-Leste has made significant progress in recent years in securing peace and stability and initiating a new development phase, and now needs to strengthen links with its neighbors, Asian Development Bank President (ADB) Haruhiko Kuroda told the 2011 Timor-Leste Development Partners Meeting here today.

“The longer term future of Timor-Leste lies in close integration with Asian economies. Such integration will help generate private sector-led economic growth needed to sustain development,” said Mr. Kuroda.

The Timor-Leste Development Partners Meeting is an annual gathering of the Timor-Leste Government, civil society, donors and private sector representatives looking at how best the nation can tackle economic development and other issues. At this year’s meeting, Timor-Leste Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao launched Timor-Leste’s Strategic Development Plan for 2011-2030.

During his address President Kuroda said that the rebalancing of economic activity toward regional and domestic demand and the emergence of a higher-spending middle class in Asia provide ideal conditions for Timor-Leste to look outward for new sources of economic growth. He urged Timor-Leste to continue investing in infrastructure and innovation, education, and regional cooperation initiatives to take advantage of this opportunity.

Since ADB began operations in Timor-Leste in 1999, it has received six grants from the Trust Fund for East Timor totaling $52.8 million, three Asian Development Fund (ADF) grants of a total $62.0 million, and 31 technical assistance (TA) funds worth $29.11 million. Currently, two ADF grants of $52.0 million and six TA projects worth $18.4 million are active.

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

ASEAN’S THORN IN THROAT: BRITISH & AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS’ DIRTY ENGAGEMENTS

ASEAN’S THORN IN THROAT: BRITISH & AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS’ DIRTY ENGAGEMENTS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

It definitely feels great to see my country and region booming economically at this time, boom marked by strengthening currencies, bourses, and investment environments. However, the climb of ASEAN to economic prosperity is being hampered by the rouge manipulations of the Saxon Empire—British imperialism and U.S. hegemonism combined.

Western empires are on the decline now, and will continue to fragment in the years to come. However, the greedy oligarchs of the said empires, notably the Saxons’, will always have dirty things to hatch and manipulate client-states, relentless acts that can ensure the gravitation of the latter towards the power orbits of the former.

Take the case of the USA. Already declining as an economic power, it still nurtures the mad agenda of a future war versus China and Russia, and is so desperate to control the necks of Indonesia and the Philippines as its obedient client-states. Obama may be the civil libertarian that he was as a young man, but those days are over, and he is performing the presidential role of his imperialist Saxon nation.

As of the 1990s yet, the USA was already in the heat of nurturing client-states in the ASEAN, with the agenda of isolating China in the long-run. Signing of ACSA (acquisition & cross-servicing agreements) were done in flurries of diplomatic talks (read: subtle bullying) that resulted to the likes of Indonesia and the Philippines being hooked up anew to the USA’s militaristic pursuits (the Philippines already abrogated the Military Bases Agreement that decade, only to sign an ACSA treaty later!).

Meantime, the British Empire, led by Queen Elizabeth herself in behalf of the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy’s interest, had long held the necks of the Sultan of Brunei, Lee Kwan Yew & leaders of Singapore, and King Bhimibol & bureaucratic puppets of Thailand. Inside Myanmar there’s the puppet Aung San Suu Kyi, while in Malaysia there’s Anwar Ibrahim.

Now, knowing the links of Aung San and Ibrahim to the British oligarchy, you should not wonder why the Mahathir leadership of Malaysia jailed Ibrahim while Myanmar’s generals continue to house-arrest Aung San Suu Kyi. The media moguls of both the West, who are in league with Queen Elizabeth and the American elites, have done every demonizing they can versus Mahathir and Myanmar’s generals, but have told nary an expose about the connection of Ibrahim and Aung San Suu Kyi to the Anglo-American-Dutch oligarchy.

The greed of the British & American oligarchs is very insatiable, they already had a taste of such greed by attacking the currencies of East Asia in mid-1997. That dirty operations, to recall, was executed by George Soros and the Quantum group’s 99 or so financiers, a dirty act that began with the attack on the Baht and expanded like wild fire to take on the ringgit, peso, and other currencies of the region.

Almost overnight, the developmental gains that took the East Asians many decades to build were wiped out! In just a couple of weeks or so, around $1.5 Trillion were taken home by the Soros & greedy financiers, while more were taken out as ‘hot money’ investments in the ASEAN were rapidly withdrawn by the same circle of financiers.

ASEAN is to a great extent being consumed by the clientelism or imperialism of the British and Americans, a reality that contributes to both political and economic instabilities in the region. For as long as the member states of ASEAN will play fiddle with Saxon imperialism, the region will take time to arise as an autonomous economic and political power on the global front.

In some other writings of mine, I already delved into the drug traders in the region, a coterie of operators who are directly tied up to British financier interests. British drug traders are in a modus Vivendi with the Chinese mafia circles, a balance of trade that shouldn’t be offset so suddenly. This trade balance ensures unhampered British dirty drug operations in the ASEAN that is a portion of its drug operations in the entire Asia from East to West of the continent.

The same drug operators were identified by economic intelligence teams as having direct tie ups or representatives of the Inter-Alpha group of companies, a group that practically controls banking & finance in Europe and America. (See reports of the Executive Intelligence Review, The Guardian, and related news for the matter.)

In some other articles, I already articulated the British & Americans’ creation of jihad groups across the region and Asia. So much studies were already done on the matter, so many exposes of the link between Al Qaida and the British Intelligence & CIA already published by other observers. With jihad terrorists roaming the region, America thus has the rationale to stretch its muscles to intervene militarily in affected countries, thus reinforcing intelligence gathering by Americans at grassroots levels in ASEAN.

Empires are definitely tough to crack and knock out. Hence, ASEAN’s encounters of many thorns in the neck from the generic Saxon empire will ensue for some more time before it will be able to establish its secure autonomy.

[Philippines, 14 November 2010]

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Friday, June 10, 2011

ASEAN ADOPTS RP’S NAUTICAL HIGHWAY

A nautical highway was designed and implemented with appreciable results in the Philippines. Today, the different islands are more interconnected. This article on ASEAN’s adoption of the PH project is hereby republished.

ASEAN ADOPTS RP’S NAUTICAL HIGHWAY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to you all! Magandang araw sa inyong lahat!

Let me return to the ASEAN, after delivering my kudos to Latin Americans and Brazilians over the presidential victory of the socialist Madam Rousseff there. How I wish that the ASEANians can emulate the audacious social policies of Brazil under the stewardship of the outgoing leader Lula and incoming Rousseff.

For the good news, the information has already been disseminated that the entire ASEAN is adopting the ‘nautical highway’ program of the Philippines. Accordingly, the planning stage for a regional nautical highway is now under way, with the program most likely implemented way before the 2015 economic integration here.

A brilliant idea, the nautical highway concept was actually hatched by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the previous president of the Philippines. A technocrat-politician, Arroyo surely found a remedy to the sluggish and inefficient transit of people and cargo across the seas in the archipelago.

To recall, Arroyo was an economist and academic before she joined government. As president of the country, she achieved the feat of solving the fiscal problems and doubling national income within a 9-year span. The Philippines finally graduated to middle-income country status during Macapagal’s incumbency.

Infrastructures also expanded by many folds during Arroyo’s incumbency. Roads, wharves, airports, levees, dams, and diverse public works benefited immensely from the boom years of her aegis. Within the context of the transport infrastructure programs did Arroyo conceptualize the RORO (roll on-roll off) nautical highway.

Executed with very high success levels, the nautical highway proceeded to deliver the expected result of accelerating the transit of people and goods across the seas. The RORO also brought down the cost of ship transportation, hence engendering a more mobile poor folks who could nil afford long distance travels.

As already elucidated in a previous article, it would be excellent if the nautical highway would be interlinked with a forthcoming regional railway. More excellent if the nautical highway, roads, railways, and airports would be interlinked in such an exquisite design of transport hubs.

ASEAN-wide planning takes a longer time than national planning, as there would be a preference for consultative process in the planning exercise. Let’s just hope that the planning phase won’t take longer than 1 & ½ years at the most, with the final output passing through a last grassroots or community hearing for discussions and feedbacks.

That means that as early as 2012, the regional RORO will be implemented. Infrastructure, technology, and logistical support will need to be installed and/or allotted by the 1^st quarter of 2012 to ensure fast implementation of the program.

With the program implemented, hopefully the poor folks in the coastal areas won’t have to travel to islands of other countries by risky motored banca or canoes. The RORO ships would bring down risks, travel costs, and make travels very comfortable for poor folks and monied middle class alike.

This analyst highly appreciates the latest ASEAN collaborative efforts for building a regional nautical highway. May the planning, implementation, and monitoring/evaluation of the future program come forth with stunning success.

[Philippines, 16 November 2010]

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Thursday, June 09, 2011

ASEAN LAND BRIDGES & RAILWAY SYSTEM

Interconnecting ASEAN member countries via landbridge cum railway project has become an urgent need. It is viable. This article is hereby republished to stress that point.

ASEAN LAND BRIDGES & RAILWAY SYSTEM

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Magandang umaga sa lahat! Good morning to everyone!

This analyst will continue on the ASEAN theme and will focus on road networks & railways for this piece. The region is now preparing the foundations for its conversion into an economic union by 2015, so it would be a productive engagement for citizens of the region to put forward their ideas about how to let the region grow and prosper, such as the idea about land bridges articulated here.

Each member country of ASEAN is now developing infrastructures at different paces, thus rendering each country with gaps in terms of road networks and railways. Such I gap, I believe, can be narrowed if the entire region will conceptualize, design, and begin laying down today the foundations of a region-wide road network.

The grand project can be dubbed as ‘land bridges program’ for the goal it can aspire to attain: that of linking all of the member countries into interfacing and interloping highways. There will be defining expressways in each of the countries that will then be integrated, expanded, and closed gap where certain spaces lack them, thus creating a seamless expressway serving as ‘land bridges’ across the entire region.

Running parallel or inter-linked with the road network would be a gargantuan railway system—of maglev technology—that will be part of the land bridging efforts. Transport hubs can be constructed in certain areas where the road facilities and railway can interface. Each member country can choose to link up its railways (running on electricity and diesel) with the regional maglev to comprise a yet another complex network with awesome potency for stimulating growth.

Such a grand project, which when interlinked further with the Mekong integrated project, will serve as multiplier effect in stimulating growth and development for all of the member countries without exception. The flow of peoples, goods and services, and investments across borders will thus increase by many folds, propelling further the generation of wealth for the union.

With the ASEAN central bank and ASEAN development bank running by 2015 and onwards, it becomes facile to fund the gargantuan land bridges project. The implementers will include private construction & development companies in the region as well as banks that can fund the project’s phases from the side of the private builder-constructors.

The project will enhance the synergy of trucking, train, and shipping down the ground and waters. Such effectively done, there will then be a reduction of moving people and goods by airplanes that can then have greater space for mobility.

The land bridges project can spur more ambitious civil engineering, so that civil works can move on to build tunnels beyond 2 kilometers below the ground. The same engineering efforts can then build tunnels across islands and help to ease out the burdens on ships as the link between island components of the road network.

The same project can also facilitate the inter-connection of the ASEAN to a new ‘silk route’ now rising across the Asian continent. The entry points will be India and China, which the union can cooperate with in building linking infrastructures. With such a possibility turned into reality, one can travel by road and trains from Luzon in the Philippines onwards to the Europe, permitting enjoyment of wonderful landscapes across many lands.

Movements of peoples, goods and services to and from the giant neighbors will also move up by many folds with the land bridge project linked up with the ‘silk route’. Ships and planes can be unburdened a bit by such a twist of development, and can then accommodate more goods & services for other continents and regions.

Regional institutions can be erected to design, manage, and regulate the conduct of construction as well as future traffic along the expressways and the railways flows. There should be transparency and efficiency in the bidding of contracts, so that early enough the governance components of the future political union can already be erected.

It is very likely that the project will be highly welcomed by the peoples of the region. The business sector, notably the constructors & developers, could hardly wait to dip their hands into it as soon as the call for participation by the ASEAN will be in place. It will surely leapfrog the region’s catching up with the developed world and with China, rendering it a potential global economic power in the foreseeable future.

[Philippines, 11 November 2010]

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Tuesday, June 07, 2011

ASEAN AEROSPACE PROGRAM

Republished article, to exacerbate S&T and industry cooperation among members of ASEAN, to be able to build a regional space program.

ASEAN AEROSPACE PROGRAM

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw! Good day, most especially to fellow Southeast Asians!

For this piece I’m going to focus on the theme of an ASEAN-wide rocket industry-based aerospace program. ASEAN is about to integrate economically by 2015, so may the member states put in the list of agenda for action the launching of a regional aerospace program.

As the region’s member countries grow at immense rates, the middle class of the region will likewise grow that will serve as its sustaining consumption base. A large middle class will mean a higher demand for telecommunications infrastructures that will, in the main, depend on satellite and related facilities.

So, instead of each member country trying to outdo each other by launching their respective rocket industry-based aerospace programs, the countries better sit down together within the aegis of an ASEAN economic union, concur a binding agreement regarding the launching of an ASEAN aerospace program, and fund the entire program internally from ASEAN resources.

With an ASEAN central bank in place by 2015, it wouldn’t be so difficult to generate funds internally for all sorts of grand projects from infrastructures to aerospace. An ASEAN development bank would then be securitized by the central bank and allocate funds for the aerospace program.

Malaysia today is in the stage of research & development for a rocket industry and has begun training & development for its technical experts. It may be prudent for the ASEAN to assign to Malaysia a lead role in orchestrating the ASEAN aerospace, with the quid pro quo of compensating Malaysia for lending its expertise and certain aspects of the backward linkages for the future industry.

The aerospace program would largely be used to launch satellites and only secondarily for space research & development. The space R & D can come later, maybe at a time when the ASEAN will be prepared for political unification in the long run.

With a satellite industry in place, the ASEAN can then compete with other market stakeholders (countries & regions with satellite industry) to supply and launch the satellites of other developing countries. Project costs can be cut down at the satellite production phase, thus bringing down prices of ready-to-launch satellites and ensuring patronage by many developing countries.

All of the essential components—at the backward linkages—of satellite production are now present as running industries in the region. From metallurgy to computer software & hardware, name it and the region has it. Hence the viability of satellite industry is very high enough.

It is in the domain of rockets that the ASEAN would need to co-partner with other countries at the production phase. It can be an option for ASEAN to co-partner with Russia that can supply the rockets that will launch ASEAN’s satellites. China and India are other options also for supplying the rockets.

However, in the long run the economic union should work out to establish a strong rocket industry for itself. The rocket industry can spin off into a more comprehensive program later, one that can be extended to launching R & D in other planets and their respective moons, space tourism, and sending missions beyond the solar system.

Rocket technology can also be modified so as to integrate it into the mining industry, so that in the long term ASEAN can mine for metals in other celestial bodies. Environmental standards are getting to be stricter by the year, standards that can constrain the extraction of rare & precious metals regionally, so the alternative in such a context would be to mine for the metals in other celestial bodies.

The aerospace program is one developmental area that will prove the potency of a regional approach to launching it contrasted to country-initiated approach. Given the gargantuan level of funding that a rocket industry cum satellite industry will entail, funding that a member country will be hard put to supply, then regionalize the program altogether to circumvent country constraints.

[Philippines, 07 November 2010]

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Saturday, June 04, 2011

ASEAN TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PREPS FOR 2015 UNION

Republished article, to drumbeat the need for more intratrade within the region. This is instrumental in creating the economic union by 2015.

ASEAN TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PREPS FOR 2015 UNION

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Will the ASEAN ever achieve economic integration that its member states have long dreamed of? Being an advocate of ASEAN unification, let me once more share thoughts about my humble region.

Binding rules of tariff reforms are now in the offing for implementation this year across the region, a proof that the unification efforts are going on despite internal barriers. The original ASEAN 5 –Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand—are the most prepared for execution of the rules, while Brunei can test-case them as it has the resources to cushion off negative repercussions if ever.

Agreed, the continental countries that are catching up in their development—Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos—need some breather space of five (5) more years to be considered as executors of the same rules. They can catch up, rest assured, so collective trust should permit their self-confidence to propel themselves to high growth.

Economic integration can induce enormous growth and fast-track development in the region altogether. Pushing through with the integration would yield a result that no more member country would be poor by as early as 2020. In other worlds, every country would move on to middle income country status, fast-tracked in its growth momentum by the economic union.

Integration would go beyond tariff reforms, for a reminder. An economic union would need central institutions to note: (a) central bank, (b) regional currency, and (c) related regulatory institutions. Governance institutions, such as a regional parliament and executive council, can undergo deeper study and preparatory formation right after 2015 (political union will take a longer time to traverse).

As to a regional currency, do note that Asian countries have already agreed on a resolution to create an Asian Monetary Fund and an Asian currency. The former speaker of the Philippines’ House of Representatives, Speaker De Venecia, was a prime mover in getting the Asian states to agree on the matter. With him out of power now in the legislature, some other key personalities in Asia should take on the cudgels for implementing the resolutions.

There are surely kinks to be resolved in matters pertaining to economic sector priorities. ASEAN countries tend to compete with one another in certain manufactures and services, so the resolutions could yield an elimination of competition and/or concurring cooperation among the competitors concerned.

ASEAN integration is coming at a time of an evolving paradigm of mixed land use. This paradigm, on a macro-level, could justify well the existence of all key manufacturing and services in a member country, thus undercutting complaints about competition across borders.

Population-wise, the ASEAN will be 700 million head-strong before 2015, which renders the region as a gigantic one. Imagine if just half of the population will be middle income in status, the class that can sustain consumer spending across time. That would be a 350-million head count serving as the economic powerhouse at the household level!

In terms of aggregated Gross National Product or GNP, the figure is nearing $3 Trillions for the region. The prospect of the ASEAN overtaking Japan is no longer remote, a possibility that can happen before 2020. Such a possibility, however, can best happen should economic integration take place as scheduled, an eventuality that will render more focused managing of economic policies and governance reforms that will fast-track growth & development.

Meantime, we can only wish for now that the trade reforms will push through, thus resulting to a semi-integrated economy. The semi-integration will produce pronto a context of ‘import-substitution’ on a regional scale, which I think is a long-overdue goal in the region.

From hereon, ASEAN has only over four (4) years to resolve the last kinks, study the integration directions inclusive of institutional designs. It will be 2011 in just two months’ time, with we hope will be another auspicious year for the humble region and its noblesse diplomats, experts, and leaders.

[Philippines, 03 November 2010]

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Thursday, June 02, 2011

ONE ASEAN: GET READY!

This article is republished to stress the contention for a stronger region of Southeast Asians.

ONE ASEAN: GET READY!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening! Magandang gabi!

The dark clouds of the electoral contests are now getting clearer in the Philippines. With our polls settled and our elected leaders about to begin their mandates, I’d now depart from election-related advocacies and move back to the international-global arenas.

I have written quite enormously about international political economy and subsidiary themes for over two (2) decades. Even my blogging has been consumed with peregrinations on the international arena. So let me go back to this arena, even as I now clarify that I am a strong advocate of One ASEAN.

As I’ve elucidated in my past writings (see 2007-08 articles), I perceive the ASEAN as the larger polity to which my own country will return in the future.

The Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, the whole of island Southeast particularly, were largely creations of Western powers. They used to be part of the Majapahit Empire, the world’s wealthiest region before Western colonization fragmented it.

Being a strong believer in ASEAN unity, I am willing to shed off my hard-line Filipino nationalism and don the cloak of pan-ASEAN patriotism. Majapahit was the original nation to me and to those who resonate with the same worldview, and eager am I to see my country return to the Empire.

The Empire no longer bears that name today. Rather, it goes by the name of ASEAN, short for Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But it bears the same geo-political and geo-economic contours of the Empire before it fragmented.

A benevolent Empire it was, as it used the fiat of trade cooperation to get membership into the polity. That is, to be able to become a part of the Empire, concur trade with its nexus and prinzeps. This was a much different track from the typical military occupation used by other regional and world powers to expand their territorial confines.

If we reflect back on what our state players are doing here today, where they’re concurring agreements and treaties using the most civil means conceivable to get to a higher level of unity, the same means actually revives the consensus methods used by our peoples in antiquity. Today, no matter how diverse our political, economic, and cultural systems are, we are talking to each other here, which is reflective of a ‘dialogues of civilizations’ approach.

From state-to-state and civil society-to-civil society talks, let us move on to direct people-to-people talks in the region. People-to-people interactions precede people-to-people cooperations. I strongly contend that people-to-people cooperation should eventually be the base for state-to-state and civil society-to-civil society cooperation and no less.

State-to-state talks are quite slow in results, even if market players joined state actors to buttress the former stakeholders’ positions. In some areas of talks, such as those involving territories, snags are observed.

People-to-people interactions and cooperation will do much to accelerate state-to-state talks that get snagged for one reason or another. The same cooperation can also accelerate the building of a pan-ASEAN identity which should precede any writing of a general treaty that will unify the region at least economically.

People-to-people interactions have already been taking place in the region for almost 2000 years in fact. Western colonization may have diminished the scales of interactions for a long while, but that era of imperialism is much behind us now.

As states, market players, and civil society players are preparing for larger talks ahead, let us noble peoples of the region go ahead and expand the levels of talks to build greater mutual confidence, appreciation of each other’s cultures, and trust. Along the way, we have fellow Asians and global citizens who will support our efforts as true friends.

In any way we can, let us get to know each other better. Let’s set aside utilitarian gains (e.g. get to know Asean pals who can become network marketing partners) and interact based on a true call of our hearts, of our souls.

That way, we contribute to building our preparedness for the grand future coming. We just can’t be caught flat-footed, not knowing what’s going on in our larger backyard because we allowed state players to monopolize the talks.

Fellow ASEANians, let’s get ready!

[Philippines, 11 May 2010]

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Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs & website anytime!

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