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TIMOR-LESTE HAS POTENTIAL TO LEAPFROG OTHER ASEAN STATES
It must be mentioned that ASEAN was prepared to let Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and to a lesser extent Vietnam have a protracted runway to develop economically. The identical leeway must be provided to Timor-Leste.
Timor-Leste arguably has the potential to leapfrog over a number of the much less developed AMS, if given the possibility. Whereas it’s true that it has very excessive poverty and unemployment charges and progress has been uneven since independence, the Timorese are comparatively younger and extremely literate. Though a 3rd of its inhabitants has had no education, this is not going to be the case going ahead.
On sure human growth measures, Timor-Leste is forward of even Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar on the time the latter three had been admitted into ASEAN within the late Nineteen Nineties. As an example, Laos’ human growth index hovered round 0.40 within the Nineteen Nineties and remains to be solely at about 0.60.
Previous to independence in 2000, Timor-Leste scored 0.48. This rose to 0.61 in 2019. A rating of 1 signifies “essentially the most developed”; the UN Improvement Programme charges nations on varied well being, schooling, and lifestyle measures.
What’s left unsaid within the dialogue on “capability” is how Timor-Leste’s admission into ASEAN may present up the grouping’s uneven efficiency on political freedom and human rights. Timor-Leste earned a 72/100 (“free”) rating in Freedom Home’s 2022 “Freedom within the World” report, the very best in Southeast Asia.
In contrast with the “partly free” scores of Indonesia at 59/100, the Philippines (55/100) and Singapore (47/100), and the “not free” scores for Laos at 13/100 and Myanmar at a depressing 9/100, Timor-Leste could be a veritable beacon of democracy in a regional organisation that usually sweeps troublesome matters beneath the carpet.
If admitted, Timor-Leste may make a prickly bedfellow in an ASEAN that continues to privilege musyawarah and mufakat (deliberation and consensus). Beforehand, Ramos-Horta as opposition chief had roundly criticised Timor-Leste’s determination to abstain from a 2021 United Nations Normal Meeting vote condemning Myanmar’s navy regime.
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