2022 ASEAN Chair: ASEAN Should Be Ten, not Nine

2022 ASEAN Chair: ASEAN Should Be Ten, not Nine

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the rotating Chair of ASEAN for next year, reconfirmed here this morning that ASEAN should have ten, not nine members, and called on all not to make complaints.

“Don’t complain now, let me do first. All can complain against me in 2023,” he underlined at the inauguration ceremony of the new office building of the General Department of Customs and Excise.

PM Hun Sen continued that according to the ASEAN’s centrality and consensus, ASEAN has ten member states, not nine.

The Prime Minister said his priority agenda for his upcoming visit to Myanmar will be on ASEAN’s centrality and consensus, and nonviolence in Myanmar’s crisis.

In April, a five-point consensus on Myanmar’s crisis has been reached by ASEAN member states, but the main important point is how to stop the violence there, he added.

Over his upcoming visit to Myanmar in January 2022, PM Hun Sen said there are both support and criticism. While some have commented that his planned visit to Myanmar was a failure of ASEAN’s efforts and the recognition of the legitimacy of the Junta’s government in Myanmar, PM Hun Sen questioned whether any ASEAN nations had so far cut off their diplomatic ties with Myanmar, and which countries that Myanmar has already severed its diplomatic relations with. AKP