The conclusions and policy issues set out below arise from the presentations and discussions on the topics of the workshop's three sessions. They are set out here for consideration by ASEAN policymakers and officials, with the hope that they will help to improve the implementation and utilization of the Charter, the ATIGA, the ACIA and the ASEAN economic integration process.

HOW TO UTILIZE ASEAN'S LEGAL PERSONALITY?

ASEAN needs to work on and settle the question of how it wishes to utilize its legal personality. This will allow the legal personality to be used meaningfully.

NEED TO MONITOR IMPLEMENTATION OF CHARTER AND ASEAN TREATIES

Article 5(2) of the Charter requires that ASEAN countries “take all necessary measures, including the enactment of appropriate domestic legislation, to effectively implement the provisions of the Charter and to comply with all obligations of membership”. The domestic implementation of the ASEAN Charter will continue to occupy ASEAN for some time. Since more obligations will be created as ASEAN takes further steps to integrate its member states, it would be useful if ASEAN instituted regular monitoring and reporting processes. This would reduce bottlenecks in the implementation of the Charter and ASEAN treaties.

AN EXPECTATION OF CHANGE

The ASEAN Charter is intended to turn ASEAN into a rulesbased organization. The workshop felt that through its very existence the Charter had an important symbolic value. It had created an expectation that things would change. It was thus important for ASEAN members states to live up to their commitments. The implementation of ATIGA and ACIA would be important tests as to whether the ASEAN Charter has changed anything or if these remained as action plans with an emphasis on plans rather than action.

BARRIER TO INTEGRATION – INFRASTRUCTURE

It was revealed during the workshop that according to a PECC survey, the major impediments to economic integration from a Southeast Asian perspective were the domestic, behind-the-border constraints, especially infrastructure.

This is the first book which contains an in-depth analysis of aspects of the ASEAN Charter and its implementation, and the new goods and investment instruments that ASEAN has recently adopted. It is intended to start the process of creating a better understanding of the Charter and its implementation issues and the instruments underpinning the push towards economic integration and the ASEAN Economic Community.

A special feature of the book is the “Summary of Key Points” at the end of each chapter. I have prepared the summaries to enable readers to obtain an overview and a quick appreciation of each chapter.

I am indebted to Ambassador K. Kesavapany, Director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) for his advice, guidance and encouragement in this book project. I am also grateful to the Head of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS, Mr Rodolfo Severino, who kindly read through the draft manuscript and offered useful suggestions.

I would like to thank all paper presenters and my colleagues, Mrs Y.L. Lee, Head of Administration, Ms Moe Thuzar, Ms Karthiani Nair, Mr Deepak Nair, Ms Emillia Amin and Mr Alex Tham Keng Sum. The workshop would not have been possible without support from them.

My special thanks to Mrs Triena Ong, Managing Editor of the ISEAS Publications Unit, who was always generous with her time in guiding me through the intricacies of preparing a book for publication. I also appreciate greatly the unstinting assistance of Ms Rahilah Yusof and Ms Sheryl Sin.

The impetus to preserve and sustain religious and communal identities against the backdrop of a wider Buddhist culture has traditionally led Muslims in southern Thailand to look to independent religious education as an alternative to Buddhist and secular national education. Consequently, much of the extant literature portrays such separate forms of education as a symbolic struggle to gain recognition for Muslims. This tendency has been most evident in the case of the Malay-Muslims concentrated in the three southern border provinces. Less visibly, however, Islamic education has recently emerged as an arena where tension and contestations within the Muslim community itself have come to be captured and expressed. This trend now operates parallel to, and to a great extent independently of, structural pressures posed by state education policies which had previously defined the parameters of the politics of Islamic education. At the heart of these contestations is the advent of the Islamic reformist movement in Thailand, with its implications for Islamic thought and praxis in a hitherto traditionalist environment.

As was the case throughout Muslim Southeast Asia, Islam in Thailand has enjoyed a long tradition of syncretism, coexisting with earlier Hinduistic and Malay religio-spiritual and supernatural beliefs and practices. In this way, both the transcendental and mundane concerns of rural communities were addressed. Particularly pronounced was the imprint of Sufism, which sought to harmonize mysticism with orthodoxy and which rejected rigid, ritualistic adherence to the shari'a. The resulting brand of Islam was pliable enough to reconcile all manner of local beliefs and customs with the monotheistic faith at its base. This syncretic nature of so-called folk Islam in Southeast Asia, though, would soon come under pressure from Islamic reform movements to abandon this characteristic elasticity for a more pristine, fundamentalist creed.

In thinking about the emergence of the Islamic reform movement in Thailand, two of its conceptual pillars – Salafism and Wahhabism — should be examined, for two main purposes. First, as the following chapters will show, Salafism and Wahhabism are seen as the intellectual and ideological foundations of reform, by virtue of the fact that they oppose traditional Islamic orthodoxy. Indeed, local scholars and educators tend to apply these terms interchangeably when describing reformist patterns in the configuration of Islamic knowledge and education in southern Thailand.

BRIEF BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

ASEAN integration in the area of trade in goods had been governed by a number of separate regional legal instruments, such as (i) the Agreement on the Common Effective Preferential Tariffs (CEPT) Scheme for AFTA; (ii) the ASEAN Agreement on Customs (1997); (iii) the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Mutual Recognition Arrangements (1998); (iv) the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement (2000); (v) the ASEAN Framework Agreement for the Integration of Priority Sectors (2004); and (vi) the Agreement to Establish and Implement the ASEAN Single Window (2005). The newly elevated end goal of ASEAN economic integration to establish a single market and production base with free flow of goods by 2015 envisaged in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint requires ASEAN to adopt a holistic approach by integrating the various existing trade-in-goods related initiatives and adopting new necessary measures into a comprehensive framework. To that end, the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) at their 39th meeting in August 2007 agreed to enhance the CEPT Agreement into a more comprehensive agreement that would set up the disciplines to enable ASEAN to create the necessary environment for the free movement of goods within the ASEAN region. This decision led to the conclusion and signing of the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) by the AEM, which was completed in February 2009.

THE HOLISTIC APPROACH OF THE ATIGA

As mentioned above, the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement is the first comprehensive agreement in ASEAN consisting of all necessary provisions to address all aspects related to the flow of goods within the region, ranging from liberalization (tariffs and non-tariffs elimination) to trade facilitation (customs procedures, trade procedures, standards and conformance procedures and sanitary and phytosanitary measures) and trade defence measures. The agreement also encompasses key principles in international trade such as non-discrimination (MFN treatment, national treatment) and transparency.

Yala Province:

1. Satree Islam Wittaya School, Muang.

2. Asasuddien School, Muang.

3. Sri-Farida Baru School, Raman.

4. Darawite School, Yaha.

5. Pratheep Wittaya School, Muang.

6. Sasana Islam Wittaya School, Yaha.

7. Islam Bajoh Wittaya School, Bannangsatar.

8. Somboon Sasana School, Yaha.

Pattani Province:

1. Addirasah Islamiyah School, Panareh.

2. Azizsatan School, Khokphoe.

3. Jongraksat Wittaya School, Muang.

4. Attarbiyah Islamiyah School, Maikaen.

5. Somboon Sasana Islam Wittaya School, Panareh.

Narathiwat Province:

1. Nirandorn Wittaya School, Muang.

2. Jariyatham Wittaya School, Waeng.

The quest for knowledge has always been viewed as an important responsibility and obligation for Muslims. This follows from injunctions in the Qur'an and hadith that among other things impress upon Muslims the need to “seek knowledge even as far as China” and “to seek knowledge from cradle to grave”, and which further instruct that “the first thing created by God was the intellect” and “one learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshippers”. The pursuit of knowledge in Islam is understood by Muslims above all to be an expression of faith. Therein lies a fundamental difference between Islamic perspectives on education and modern, secular understandings of the function of knowledge, which tend to ascribe to knowledge an instrumentalist value towards the advancement of material interests. Islamic schools do not have as their primary task the supply of labour to the state or equipping citizens for the modern economy, particularly when such aims may entail compromises of faith and creed. This is not to say, however, that the considerations of physical welfare and the fulfilment of basic material needs are not a matter of concern for Muslim parents, teachers, and students alike. Indeed they are. The point to stress is that these concerns are seldom articulated as the foremost priority. Islamic schools are seen to provide Muslim students with specifically religious education and their concern is, above all, the matter of spiritual well-being. It is to this end that they follow distinct and long-cherished traditions of knowledge accumulation and dissemination. Any assessment of the Islamic education system, whether for the purpose of policy formulation or the study of a time-honoured tradition and institution, must necessarily bear this in mind.

Because of the place of knowledge in Islam, the Islamic school has through the centuries been considered a major social and religious institution of the Muslim world. This should not detract from the fact that Islamic education is in and of itself hardly a monolithic entity devoid of its own dichotomies and dissonances. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, what “knowledge” entails, who enjoys the authority to define it, and what the appropriate forms and structures are of the institutions and pedagogies through which it is transmitted — these questions are subjected to intense debate and contestation, not least from within Muslim communities themselves.

ASEAN is at an exciting phase of its development. It has started to grapple with the meaning, implications and the implementation issues pertaining to the newly adopted ASEAN Charter. Concurrently, ASEAN is working intensively on integrationrelated economic issues for the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. This is the first book which contains an indepth analysis of aspects of the new ASEAN Charter and the trade in goods and the comprehensive investment agreements ASEAN has recently completed. The book deals with the key areas of legal personality conferred on ASEAN by the Charter; the legislation and other measures required by ASEAN member states to comply with the Charter; and the plan, progress and related issues relating to ASEAN's new trade in goods and comprehensive investment agreements. The book also highlights policy issues for consideration by ASEAN policy-makers. The book is edited by S. Tiwari, the former Head of the International Law Division in Singapore's Attorney-General's Chambers and currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at ISEAS. He was extensively involved in many aspects of ASEAN-related work, including negotiating and drafting of its key trade, investment and dispute settlement-related instruments.

The business-sector presentations were followed by views expressed by business personalities, ASEAN officials and those from thinktanks specializing in ASEAN issues.

NON-TARIFF BARRIERS (NTBS)

It was agreed that the deadline of five years for the removal of non-tariff barriers in ATIGA was “unrealistic”. It was “more of a paper assessment” but had to be retained in ATIGA as a commitment. NTBs were a “moving target” and therefore had to be eliminated on a continuous basis. It was generally felt that some non-tariff measures were necessary and accordingly it was best to adopt a “measured approach” and target “barrier components” of these measures for elimination. ASEAN planned to issue guidelines on how to implement non-tariff measures such as import licensing procedures.

ATIGA sought to eliminate NTBs through trade facilitation. Measures such as the harmonized tariff nomenclatures, the ASEAN window, et cetera, were attempts towards making progress although they were not fully operational yet.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR

ASEAN Secretariat officials felt that the private sector needed to take a keener interest in ASEAN. It needed to keep abreast of ASEAN developments and “prod” the public sector.

ASEAN was considering the possibility of obtaining privatesector inputs on NTBs through a joint consultative committee on trade facilitation. It was hoped that the private sector would speak up. It was mentioned that the private sector's common excuse was that they had the “right to remain silent”.

THE ISSUE OF CORRUPTION

A participant observed that the likely reason for the business people's reluctance to voice concerns was that they were “scared of retaliation” from certain authorities. He added that no one had raised the issue of corruption as a non-tariff barrier. One of the private-sector commentators felt that the silence on corruption was a manifestation of the ASEAN tendency to “keep things comfortable”. He added that a survey of ASEAN businesses, across all sectors, had been carried out to determine their concerns and their perceptions in relation to non-tariff measures. However, this study had never been released, since it highlighted the issue of corruption in ASEAN.

BACKGROUND

Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98, ASEAN has been working towards building up its economic resilience to external shocks by reinforcing macroeconomic fundamentals at the national levels and seeking to strengthen global and regional integration. ASEAN's intention is to transform itself into a regional powerhouse that would be a driver of both regional and global expansion through regional integration. The 1997 ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration agreed on the transformation of ASEAN into a stable, prosperous and highly competitive region (ASEAN Vision 2020). At its 2003 meeting in Bali, ASEAN Leaders declared that the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) shall be the goal of regional economic integration by 2020 (Bali Concord II) and this goal was accelerated to 2015 at the Cebu Summit in 2007.

In making the AEC a reality, ASEAN intensified internal integration measures towards the process of evolving into an economic area that would take advantage of the strong economic potential of a combined market of close to 600 million people. The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint (AEC Blueprint) was developed as a single and coherent roadmap for advancing the AEC by identifying the characteristics and elements of the AEC, with clear targets and timelines.

Under the Blueprint, legal instruments of regional integration were reviewed to make them relevant to the present competitive global economic environment. These measures included the review of the various goods agreements and protocols and their integration into a single comprehensive agreement known as the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA). In addition, the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA) Council of Ministers agreed to step up regional efforts in attracting FDI. In 2007, the AIA Council agreed to revise the 1987 Agreement for the Promotion and Protection of Investments (known as the Investment Guarantee Agreement or “ASEAN IGA”), and the 1998 Framework Agreement on the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA) or the “AIA Agreement”, as well as its two related protocols, into a single agreement to be known as the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA). The ACIA was concluded in 2008 and signed in 2009.

In 2003 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to establish an Economic Community (AEC) which would transform the region into a single market and production base which would make the region a more dynamic and stronger segment of the global supply chain. This plan was given further form in 2007 by the adoption of the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint. The ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) and ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) are intended to turn the vision of a single market into a reality.

However, these plans come at time of unprecedented uncertainty in the global economy. This chapter will address the implications of the crisis for the region's plans, how ATIGA and ACIA are different from previous agreements, and what else the region might add to its agenda to increase its competitiveness.

CRISIS CHANGING DRIVERS OF GROWTH

Analysis of a survey conducted by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) in May, showed that Southeast Asians believed that while the global economic outlook was dim, especially for the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia, it was less so for emerging giants, China and India. The implication of this is that there is at least a perception that the traditional final markets for ASEAN's production — Western industrialized economies — are unlikely to be as robust a source of demand as in the past — but hopes remain for demand for these emerging giants.

IS THE GROWTH MODEL SHIFTING?

The same PECC survey indicates an expectation that the crisis will accelerate the regional economic integration process, especially among Southeast Asian respondents. Furthermore, a large majority of 76 per cent of Southeast Asian respondents agreed that “slower growth in Western industrialized countries for the foreseeable future will encourage a shift to domestic demand growth in Asian economies”. This change in global demand structure has profound implications for ASEAN's plans. The critical question is whether the AEC Blueprint and its implementing agreements such as ATIGA and ACIA are predicated on a pre-crisis understanding of the global economy.

INTRODUCTION

The ASEAN Charter was signed on 20 November 2007 at the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore and it entered into force on 15 December 2008 on the 30th day after all ten ASEAN member states submitted instruments of ratification to the ASEAN Secretary-General. While the Charter does take the important step of conferring legal personality on ASEAN, it does not completely resolve all the concerns regarding the implementation of the Charter itself.

The implementation problems may arise from three main areas. First, a lack of political will at the state level to implement the treaty. Second, at the domestic level, if the domestic laws are either not in conformity with the treaty or are silent with regard to treaty norms or obligations, the domestic courts applying those laws may not enforce the obligations of the treaty. Finally, there may be administrative structural problems preventing the obligations of the treaty from being applied at the ground level. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to deal with the latter as that will require surveys and interviews at the ground level of each of the ten ASEAN member states for each specific obligation. Instead, it will focus on the former two problems.

In this regard, the terminology used by Brown Weiss and Jacobson regarding strategies for encouraging state compliance with environmental law may be helpful. Using a matrix of “intention” and “capacity”, they suggest that a policy toolkit of sanctions, incentives, and “sunshine” can be part of a strategy to strengthen state compliance. Their empirical study showed that where intention and capacity of states to comply were strong, sunshine was the most appropriate tool. Merely highlighting the problem was sufficient as the states usually were able to quickly resolve the issue. However, where capacity was weaker, incentives were necessary to increase the capacity.

According to the National Education Act (2542/1999) the government of Thailand is responsible for the provision of nine years of compulsory education and twelve years of free education — six years at elementary (Arabic: ibtidai, Thai: prathom 1–6), three years at middle (Arabic: mutawassit, Thai: mathayom 1–3), and three years at secondary (Arabic: thanawi, Thai: matayom 4–6) levels. The move to increase the number of years of compulsory education from six to nine years was welcomed in some circles but also met with reservation by others. The Malay-Muslim community, in particular harboured concerns that increasing the number of years of compulsory education meant that their children would have to spend more time in government schools before they could transfer to Islamic education institutions. Since 2006, the Ministry of Education has worked to align the standard of Islamic studies by bringing its various levels on par with those of government schools. Correspondingly, ibtidai has been standardized with primary schools (six years), mutawassit with secondary schools (three years), and thanawi with upper secondary school/high school (three years).

Despite the fact that southern Thailand has a mix of Islamic and secular national schools, it has been estimated that as much as 85 per cent of Malay- Muslim students attend Islamic schools. This figure is striking and makes abundantly clear that, despite the overwhelming forces of modernization and secularization, and years of pressure to assimilate, Islamic education and Islamic teachers continue to have pride of place in the collective sociocultural consciousness and historical memory of Malay-Muslims in southern Thailand. The figures in Table 2.1 and 2.2 illustrate the continued popularity of Islamic schools in the southern border provinces (see Table 2.1 and 2.2).

While marginally different from the estimate of 85 per cent highlighted above, the following figures compiled by the Ministry of Education for the southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani, along with Satun and Songkhla, of Muslim students and the types of schools they were enrolled in for the year 2000, nevertheless indicate the considerable popularity of Islamic schools (Table 2.3 and 2.4).

On the other hand, it is glaringly obvious that national schools in the southern provinces have among the lowest attendance rates of any in the country.

ASEAN is armed with a new “charter”. The ASEAN Charter gives the group a common legal personality; it contains (minor) institutional innovations; and it houses an ASEAN Political-Security Community, an ASEAN Sociocultural Community and, not least, the pre-existing ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). On the economic front, the Charter contains two new agreements, the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) and the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA). These integrate separate agreements into single consolidated legal texts on trade in goods and foreign direct investment respectively. The ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) remains unchanged.

What are we to make of the new-look ASEAN? Outsiders have long belittled ASEAN for its internal divisions and lack of integration. ASEAN rhetoricians counter that with its brand-new Charter, its AEC Blueprint, and indeed its new free trade agreements (FTAs), ASEAN has reached a watershed. In future it will spur intra-regional integration, be a viable collective force in wider Asian and international relations, and collectively counter common challenges – not least the present global economic crisis.

I remain a sceptical outsider. My preference is to take a cool, hard look at the ASEAN economic track record and the real forces driving regional economic integration. I do not take ASEAN rhetoric at face value, nor do I confine myself to legal microdetails. The job of the economist, especially one with a strong applied interest in policies and institutions, is to survey the forest, not to rhapsodize its sylvan beauty, nor to microscopically examine its trees in splendid isolation.

Do not get me wrong. ASEAN is better than nothing. It is good for politicians and officials to meet regularly and jaw-jaw. In a region historically riven by conflict and violence, that is better than the alternative. If member governments can agree on modest common denominators, so much the better. Beyond serving as a marginally useful chat forum, does ASEAN, as an economic entity, have substance? Will the Charter and the AEC make a difference? Let's start with the ASEAN track record, and then move on to the Charter.

Depending on the source, the percentage of Muslims in Thailand has been placed at around 4–8 per cent of a total population of approximately 65 million people. Islam is currently the largest minority religion in Thailand where (despite intermittent pressures by the Buddhist Sangha), Buddhism, a religion of great import in Thai society and the creed of the vast majority of Thais, has not been declared the official religion of the country. Muslims are concentrated in the southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala, and Satun, where they make up anywhere between 65–85 per cent of the local population and are mostly ethnic Malay. The region itself has become known in popular parlance, somewhat problematically, as the “deep south”, “deepestmost south” or “far south” — terminology that further accentuates the perception of marginality to Thailand. Other areas of major Muslim concentrations are in the North (Chiang Mai), the central plains (Bangkok and Ayutthaya), and the “upper” south (Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phuket). This narrative of the marginalization of Malay-Muslims is further underscored in the way that until recently they were also known pejoratively as khaek or “dark-skinned visitors” in colloquial discourse. There is also a Buddhist minority in the Muslim-dominated southern provinces amounting to approximately 30 per cent of the population, depending on which of the southern provinces one is referring to. Despite their minority status in the south, Buddhists are concentrated chiefly in urban areas and town centres (though there are Buddhist-majority rural villages scattered across the southern provinces), while the Malay-Muslims have a weightier presence in rural areas where economic activity continues to revolve around farming, agriculture, and fishing, and where traditional Malay practices and lifestyles still hold sway despite the onslaught of development and modernization.

UNDERSTANDING ISLAM'S PLACE IN THAI HISTORY

The question of the arrival of Islam to Patani continues to be debated by Thai historians. According to some historical records, Muslim communities were present in Thailand as early as the thirteenth century — prior even to the conversion of Melaka — during the reign of King Ramkhamhaeng (1279–1298) who ruled the Sukhothai kingdom. Islam, as several scholars have noted, arrived in Thailand via a number of routes, namely, the Indo- Malay Archipelago, Yemen, Persia, South Asia, China, Burma, and Cambodia.