December 20, 2024
JAKARTA – The Foreign Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Sugiono would not attend the informal ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Bangkok on Friday, as he would be accompanying President Prabowo Subianto at the Developing Eight (D8) Summit in Cairo.
The ministry’s director general for ASEAN cooperation, Sidharto Suryodipuro, is scheduled to attend the Bangkok meeting on the minister’s behalf.
This is the second time since Prabowo’s inauguration that Indonesia has sent a concerning message to its regional neighbors, following the joint statement of Prabowo and Chinese President Xi Jinping on cooperative projects in areas of overlapping maritime claims last month.
The Prabowo administration is, of course, entitled to lower ASEAN’s priority in our foreign policy, but our ASEAN neighbors, too, are within their rights to turn away from us in response.
Sugiono’s absence from the regional gathering may also be perceived as a slight to Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who initiated two separate meetings on Myanmar in Bangkok this week. The young prime minister believes she can foster a meaningful breakthrough in the prolonged crisis.
On Thursday, Thailand will host a meeting with representatives from China, India, Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand, all of which share borders with Myanmar. The junta will also send an official delegation. The gathering is being called an “informal consultation on border security and transnational crimes”.
ASEAN alone cannot end the prolonged humanitarian tragedy in Myanmar. The junta is not able to fully control the country, as resistance fighters have long held some regions. China, meanwhile, is probably not overly concerned about the outcome of the conflict, as whoever comes out on top will still depend heavily on the world’s second-largest economy. However, the internal chaos in Myanmar has been spreading beyond its borders.
On Friday, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa will organize a special meeting for ASEAN foreign ministers. Indonesia should clarify that it opposes the attendance of any official delegation from the Myanmar junta.
Some may say this is unrealistic, but Indonesia should stick to the basic principles agreed upon by ASEAN leaders. And only the leaders can change their position.
The decision for Sugiono to skip the ministerial gathering is strengthening speculation among the diplomatic community in Jakarta, including senior diplomats, that Prabowo, a former Army general, may soften the country’s stance on Myanmar’s junta leader, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, and worse, that under the Prabowo administration, ASEAN will be sidelined.
Rumors that Sugiono would skip the meeting in Thailand had been circulating for quite some time before Wednesday’s confirmation. But it’s still not too late for Prabowo to change his mind. Not having Sugiono at the meeting will do too much damage to regional relations following Prabowo’s ill-considered agreement with Xi.
The agreement was widely perceived as an unnecessary and possibly inadvertent concession to China. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law on the Sea (UNCLOS) recognizes Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Natuna Sea. In 2016, the UN rejected China’s claims to nearly all of the South China Sea as well as the nine-dash line it had tried to use to justify them.
But China does not care a whit about this rejection and continues to stake its claims on its own version of history.
The Indonesian government, meanwhile, said in response to backlash to the agreement that its position on the Natuna Sea remained unchanged.
Any change of position on this issue would damage the reputation and credibility of Indonesia as the de facto leader of ASEAN. Many neighbors and friendly countries were shocked after reading the joint statement early last month.
We call on the President to change his mind and ask his minister to go to Bangkok before it’s too late. We also urge the President to stick to the decision of ASEAN leaders to bar the junta from attending any official ASEAN meetings until Gen. Hlaing proves that he has delivered his promise to return peace and democracy to the country.
Indonesia would betray its own core principles if it started to tolerate the brutal Myanmar junta.