Regional ties 'key to global prosperity'

Regional ties 'key to global prosperity'

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad delivers a speech at the Bangkok Post Forum on Thursday. (Photo by Patipat Janthong)
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad delivers a speech at the Bangkok Post Forum on Thursday. (Photo by Patipat Janthong)

Many regions could learn from the tight unification of Asean and the only way for the regional bloc to continue to enjoy prosperity is through an equal share of benefits, said former prime minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday.

"Asean meetings today would involve major nations of the world where Europe, India, Japan, South Korea and China, all would like to interact and find ways of improving relations and economic ties with Asean," he said.

"This shows that Asean is somewhat more durable than many other regional associations. Even the European Union today is under pressure because some countries are thinking about leaving, but there is no talk about Asean countries leaving the association and I think we can provide a good model for other regions."

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad at the Bangkok Post Forum. (Video by Jetjaras Na Ranong)


Dr Mahathir said Asean can be a good model because of its friendship and the success of avoiding war between one another. There have been conflicts in the past 50 years but all of them were discussed during the Asean leaders' meetings which allowed the members to avoid confrontation with one another.

"This in itself is a great success," he said. "In all regions of the world, the tendency towards conflict is always there but the mechanisms for solving conflicts do not function very well in many regions. For example, the Middle East is in a state of turmoil today because regional associations there are not functioning as well as Asean."

Dr Mahathir said there is no room for isolation within the Asean bloc as there are benefits from association via the increases of intra-trade and foreign direct investment and there are fewer problems surrounding immigration issues in the region when compared to others. Nevertheless, there still are some countries that are being left behind in the bloc's quest for prosperity.

If the Afta [Asean Free Trade Area] idea can be fully implemented, we would have a region capable of manufacturing for 600 million people, he said.

"But this is not easy because some countries are way behind others and they are not able to benefit as much from the association as the richer and more sophisticated countries."

He explained that a borderless world and open competition are only worthwhile between countries with the same level of development where he cited the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal as one of the agreements with lopsided development among member countries.

"I was not keen on TPP because it is impossible for the poor countries to benefit much from the coming together of these countries," he said. "In the case of Asean, countries like Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia are still a little behind others and there is a need for us to give them some special privilege or handicap so that they can groom and build up their industries until they reach a level where they can compete and if we do this, I think we would be able to have the huge market that we want."

In terms of democratic development in the region, Dr Mahathir said the "losers" or parties that have lost in elections should play by the rules and stop protesting against legitimate results.

"For example, if there is a dictatorship, people with different ideologies will come together to overthrow the dictatorship but once the dictatorship is overthrown, all these factions that have come together feel that they were entitled to take the place of the previous dictator," he said.

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