ASEAN: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING…A LOOSE CLUB FOR SOCIAL GATHERINGS BY PEOPLE WHO DISDAIN INTELLECTUALS AND STRATEGISTS,

SO NO ASEAN CINEMA OR SINEMA NUSANTARA MELAYU TO TALK ABOUT AND HOW THE POLITICAL AND ELECTED LEADERS HAVE FAILED TO CAUSE BAHASA MELAYU TO BE THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE REGION.

By Mansor Puteh

…THEY ARE ALL NO BETTER THAN THE OIC, ARAB LEAGUE AND GULF COUNCIL COUNTRIES (GCC).

You can tell it that ASEAN has failed the community when many people in the countries in ASEAN are still looking at each other with suspicion and given the chance they would go at each other’s neck.

ASEAN has been around for a very long time. And they organized their twenty-sixth summit in Kuala Lumpur in April, 2015.

Again the emphasis is on the leaders who will line up on stage and hold each other’s hands, so all of them look odd and weird.

The people of ASEAN will look at them this way too; they who like to hog the media traffic like they have had not enough of that in their own countries doing what they have been doing all these years.

They did not have any plans to create an ASEAN Cinema. They did not think it was necessary or important.

They did not know Hollywood is what’s keeping the Americans together and how the country has been using it as a tool of foreign policy too and at the same time causing many around the world especially in the ASEAN region to feel small and inferior.

In fact all the ASEAN leaders too have become inferior, including those who they had taken away from, the political posts that cause them to be invited to attend the ASEAN Summit held each year at the different countries on a rotating basis. 

The Association of Southeas Asian Nations of ASEAN was formed many years ago; morphing from one entity to a much larger one, which till today has many wondering if it is just a social club for the leaders of each of the ten countries to come together every year at different venues to wear common clothes of the host nations and to hold their hands together in a straight row.

They have not been able to do much because Asean leaders are too narrow-minded; they only think of what is good for them and all of them are only interested in a few things.

There is no such a thing as Asean unity.

Most people in the Asean region know more about America and the west than their own neighbors.

Their films are not shared. Their music is alien to the others.

And there is no official Asean language.

It was thought that Melayu would be the official language of Asean considering the vast number of people in this region who speak in this language, from three of the ten countries, with some in the other countries as well such as Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and also Cambodia.

There is no such a thing as Asean cooperation. It only happens amongst the top leaders of each of the countries and not amongst the leaders of other social, cultural, economic and religious authorities, much less amongst the ordinary folks in the region.

As long as there is no ASEAN Cinema to talk with or Sinema Nusantara Melayu, there is no chance for the major countries in the ASEAN region to be united.

In fact, the ASEAN leaders have caused the young in the ASEAN countries to be more American now than they were before.

And the development of the countries in the region has also caused America and the west to benefit more including Japan and South Korea and also China which are not in the region.

No ASEAN country can say it is leading the pack; they have not created leaders in all fields especially in the cinema and television and media and they are still totally dependent on those that they could get from elsewhere particularly from America.

The motorcar manufacturing industries of Malaysia and Indonesia have failed to gain inroads into the other countries in the region.

There was a major flaw in the strategies that the two countries had undertaken to promote the vehicles and models they manufacture in the two countries.

No wonder, Timor of Indonesia flopped and Proton of Malaysia is only sold mostly in the country with so few units sold elsewhere.

Even the least developed countries in the Third World and the Arab or Muslim World cannot be compelled to buy them, and they still chose to buy those from Japan and South Korea and now slowly from China too.

Yet, the ASEAN political leaders are coy to what has happened in their own countries and the region so each time when they meet, they prefer to socialize and do nothing more to get wide publicity in the media of their own countries and in the region.

When will the sit back and listen to the experts in the major fields talk for a change?

Even the ASEAN Secretariat which has its headquarters in Jakarta cannot do much; they are some of the least regional group in the world.

The ASEAN secretary-general too is relatively unknown even in the region and the country he comes from. 

But at least there is no war in the ASEAN region like in the Arab World and Africa where they are not only fighting with each other but also against poverty and deprivation which all have caused untold hardship to the people they were all elected to serve.

But alas, they only serve themselves more than the people. 

And despite having so many leaders in the ASEAN region all of them collectively are still not capable to do much or anything at all.

The problem being that they are all too narrow-minded to be able to appreciate what the Sinema Nusantara can do to the majority Melayu in the region not because they have not been told about it; it’s just that they are all too dumb to know what it is all about and what it can do.