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that was when emerging countries, new league independent

countries, countries emerging out of colonialism became very
active, engaged, and wanting to prove to the world that they
should not have been colonized. But on that stage, countries

of Southeast Asia, would have been overshadowed by major
personalities and major actors like Nehru of India, Nasser of

Egypt, Zhou Enlai of China, Tito of Yugoslavia.

So, ASEAN was invented on the eighth of August 1967
in order to provide for small and medium size countries like

us, divide, diverse and different but with common geography
next to each other. We all have our own problems to pursue

and to resolve. In the end, we travel together motivated by
that vision of the future that we shall create a region integrated
with a blessing of freedom and prosperity for our own people,

our prosperity, and our children’s next generation. Together
we have travelled up to this half century.

To the surprise of the world, we have succeeded along
the way but for a long time, these five decades of journey of
ASEAN, the contribution, the participation, the ownership of

this organization, of this community have been mostly at the
level of the leaders, of the diplomats, of the ministers, of the

officials; not as much to the glass-roots level which people can
claim, “Yes, we own it, yes, we belong to it, yes, we want to
make a contribution, too”. The challenges of ASEAN are going

Policy Forum 21

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