THE CALL FOR A NEW BANDUNG
(This piece first came out in Foreign Sec. Blas F. Ople’s column
Horizons in the Sunday, December 22, 2002 issue of The Manila Bulletin)


At the margins of the Third JCBC (Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation) between Indonesia and the Philippines, co-chaired by Indonesian Foreign Minister Noer Hassan Wirajuda and myself, I broached to the Indonesian panel the idea of convening a Bandung II on the commemoration of the golden jubilee of the Bandung conference of Third World leaders, which falls due in 2005.  I said that it was logical and proper for the daughter of President Sukarno, now the Indonesian President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, to pick up the torch and lead in convening a new Bandung Summit, together with the rest of ASEAN.

Indeed, it turned out that the Indonesian government, together with the government of South Africa, had already been laying the groundwork for a fitting commemoration of Bandung’s golden anniversary for 2005.  All the sub-regional groupings of Third World countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, have been contacted, and are involved in the planning.

The need for a Bandung II arises from the enfeeblement if not the total loss of the voice of the South in the post-Cold War Era.  The non-aligned Movement (NAM), a product of the first Bandung, is struggling to remain relevant in world affairs.  Lacking a fresh focus, the NAM has been fairly swamped by the rush to globalization and has become a poor and unwanted spectator in global negotiations.

NAM countries are forced to fight with each other in negotiations under the World Trade Organization.  The Group of 77, another offspring of the first Bandung, tries in vain to forge Third World unity on important negotiating issues within the framework of the Untied Nations General Assembly.

In the first Bandung of 1955, the luminous figures of the Third World, ranging from Sukarno of Indonesia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Chou En-Lai of China, Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Tito of Yugoslavia, Bandaranaike of Ceylon, Nkrumah of Ghana, and Carlos P. Romulo of the Philippines gathered on the call of President Sukarno to chart an independent foreign policy of the developing countries, steering a middle course between the two nuclear-armed superpower, titans, the United States and the Soviet Union.  Most of the Third World countries coalesced under the banner of Bandung, of the NAM, and automatically coordinated with each other in global negotiations.  As for the Philippines, the country was belatedly admitted to NAM only after the Senate ended the existence of the two major US bases, Clark and Subic.

As Senate President, I attended the last NAM Summit held in Durban, South Africa, as Special Envoy for then President Joseph Estrada.  Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Yassir Arafat were the stellar attractions, with Castro pulling in more lady fans to his circle than the others.  Gone were the giants of Bandung I.  In the substantive sessions, I could feel a certain degree of impotence as the Summit dealt with contemporary global issues rather offhandedly and in a more or less token manner, as though what mattered was to advertise the continuing existence of NAM in a globalizing world where it had been marginalized.

It was in Durban where I first conceived the idea of a Bandung II.  It is true that the NAM played a key, strategic role in galvanizing the Third World countries to steer an independent course during the Cold War but now they faced the prospect of becoming irrelevant in the post-Cold War era, in the new unipolar world of the early 21st century.

In a Bandung II, a revitalized NAM can perform the role of a new rallying point for the unity of developing countries to protect their interests against the tide of globalization and seek structural reforms in the United Nations to allow the Third World a voice in all political and economic negotiations.  It can be a countervailing force to the monopoly on power now exercised by the G-8, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, each with a veto power, the Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, and a vastly enlarged NATO and European Union.

This new grouping will be initially resented by the United States and the developed countries of the OECD, but in time they will come to appreciate the advantages of a better organized global structure for negotiating differences between the First World and the Third World.  Both sides should promote friendly and constructive relations.

For President Megawati, Bandung II will present an opportunity to build upon the legacy of her father, the main convenor of the First Bandung.  With the support of fellow ASEAN leaders such as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir of Malaysia, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, President Tran Duc Luong of Vietnam, Sultan Bolkiah of Brunei, King Sihanouk of Cambodia and other ASEAN heads of state, but especially China and India, she can pull off the miracle of a Bandung II in the year 2005.

END