INTRODUCTION

Our guest today is Fidelis Magalhaes, who is a former minister of the presidency of the Council of Ministers in East Timor, and he has nearly two decades of policy and government experience. We start our conversation talking about the country's pursuit of full ASEAN membership and its development trajectory. Make sure you tune into the full episode as we go through a range of other subjects, including major power involvement and future geopolitical and geoeconomic prospects.

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FULL ASEAN MEMBERSHIP PURSUIT

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast Fidelis: thank you for joining us and let's get started. I wanted to talk more specifically about Timor as a country because as we were talking just before we came on live, it is a country that often doesn't get the attention that it deserves within Southeast Asia. I did want to start with Timor's pursuit of full ASEAN membership. It is the country that is in Southeast Asia but remains out of ASEAN in terms of full ASEAN membership as of now. But that's changing with ASEAN already agreeing to Timor joining the institution as a full member. That's still in a process of being underway. I recall President Jose Ramos-Horta once referring to ASEAN as being more difficult to get into than heaven. But that being said, Timor has undergone a lot of steps that are necessary for full ASEAN membership and this is a very complex process. The steps are not just taken by Dili itself, but also other ASEAN countries in terms of areas like diplomatic infrastructure – those aspects are still being worked out and progressing. There are a lot of headlines periodically that focus on ASEAN membership about it as an institution, but you as a former policymaker have a sense of the significance of what this means for actual policy and for Timor's foreign policy and geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape. Could you help explain the policy significance of Timor's admission to ASEAN and why does it matter from a historical and contemporary perspective?

Minister Fidelis Magalhaes: Well, thank you very much, Prashanth, for the opportunity. So let's start with ASEAN membership, or at least with the most recent development. I think, as you rightly pointed out, President Ramos-Horta once said that it was more difficult to get into heaven rather than joining ASEAN. I think at this stage, the signals that we've been receiving from Malaysia, who is now the chair, and from other members, we have been receiving quite a significant and more promising signal. So in a sense, I think the expectation is already Timor-Leste is somehow around the corner from heaven, but maybe not entirely inside. So the expectation or the signals that we've been receiving here from Timor-Leste, or at least the sense, is that maybe still this year Timor could join. And at least from the policymakers or from present government's viewpoints or statements is that it is realistic to expect Timor-Leste becoming a full member or acquiring full membership. But again, there are still things to be done policy-wise and streamlining policies to adapt to the ASEAN standards. So it all remains to be seen. But I think from Dili's viewpoint, I think there is a new sense of optimism.

REGIONAL CONNECTIVITY

ASEAN Wonk: Great thanks for that. You mentioned Malaysia and its ASEAN chairmanship. Given the twin pillars are inclusivity and sustainability, Timor’s inclusion would presumably be part of that story and would make sense from a narrative perspective as well. I’m wondering if you could say a little bit as well about something we were talking about offline earlier. Often there’s a bit of misunderstanding or lack of understanding about some of the very basic mechanisms within Timor and how it operates. It is a country that on most indices is among the most – and sometimes the most – democratic country in Southeast Asia. But I know President Ramos-Horta and other officials have said, in spite of the fact that Timor registers quite well on these metrics, they also hope that Timor can improve on the economic metrics as well, because it remains one of the lesser developed countries in Asia, and also one of the lesser connected countries within Southeast Asia. For people who have gone to Timor, they recognize there's only a few places that you can get flights actually registered, and hopefully this changes over time. Can you provide us with a sense of that regional connectivity? Because for the country, there’s links to Indonesia and relationships with countries that are important and evolving such as with Singapore, for example. How do you assess not just the issue of ASEAN membership, but connectivity of Timor as a member of the Southeast Asian neighborhood and community?

Minister Fidelis Magalhaes: Well, let's start with going back in time slightly. So I think the FRETILIN leadership [initially the resistance fighting for Timor’s independence] believed it was important for Timor-Leste to be a member of ASEAN for political reasons. And this continues to be – at least I think – imprinted in political discourses within Timor-Leste. And the thinking remains the same: that it is imperative for Timor-Leste to be a member of ASEAN in order to ensure our long-term security and also in order to gain voice internationally. Because as you know, globally, it is the practice these days for countries to be members of their own immediate neighborhood alliances or groupings. Well, Timor-Leste and probably one or two other countries in the world I think have not done so. So it is, for our viewpoint, it is almost incomplete for ASEAN to exclude Timor-Leste. It is so natural for Timor-Leste to be part of ASEAN. Culturally, economically, Timor-Leste is part of Southeast Asia and ASEAN. It is embedded. It is a natural member of Southeast Asia. And maritime Southeast Asia is obviously quite incomplete without having Timor-Leste as a member.

Now, we understand that there are disagreements. There are concerns. And this is not only something which I think concerns observers or members of ASEAN. Even the Timorese, we are normally very harsh in terms of assessing our own advances or our own progress. We believe that sociopolitically, we have made a lot of advancements, we've achieved quite a lot. But in order for these sociopolitical achievements to be sustainable, you'll need to combine it with socioeconomic or economic development. Now, whereas we are advancing quite fast sociopolitically or institutionally or in terms of state-building, economically we are lagging behind. So for us it is also a matter of state survival or the continuity of the Timorese state or a nationhood as a social political experiment of building a democratic society or a sustainable society.

We really have to, we do not have time to waste. We need to actually push our economic development or we really need to move ahead with economic development. So the hope therefore is that by joining ASEAN we'll be able to adapt our institutions and our regulations with that of ASEAN and that would probably make Timor-Leste conducive for intra-regional trading. That would make Timor-Leste be more adaptable to requirements from ASEAN and also from WTO and more universal or global trading regimes. So that's, I think, the expectation.

Now, what does it mean in practical terms? In practical terms, I think there is a lot of legal reforms that need to be undertaken. There are a lot of institutional reforms that are needed because, as you know, our institutions, despite the progress, their progress so far is normally based on an economy that is based heavily on petroleum, but also it is an inheritance to some degree of a rather centralized UN mechanism. So you actually need to modernize this and you'd have to make sure that it is adaptable to the demands of a more embedded regional economic architecture. So we believe that ASEAN as the future economic powerhouse would be beneficial to Timor-Leste. So us joining ASEAN would in a way allow us or enable us to have a greater, larger market. As you know, being a small country, we do not have the privilege of having an economy of scale. For our own development, we really have to be embedded or be part of a regional economic framework.

But for that, you really need a lot of work. We also have to work with the mindset of the people. So people have to understand the tradeoffs; people have to understa