Asean will never be the same again. At a summit beginning on Sunday, in Singapore, leaders of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are scheduled to sign a charter laying out binding commitments to an integrated community by 2015.
Once leaders put their signatures to the document, Asean will legally become an official organisation able to attend, for example, diplomatic meetings.
Since its inception in 1967, Asean has been legally invisible. This reflects the founding preference for flexibility and consensus in place of binding commitments and institutions. But this approach is inadequate for the economic and political challenges it now faces.
Hence the charter. Expectations are high that it will introduce rules, binding resolutions and possibly majority voting on some issues, enabling Asean to move forward even if some states disagree. There are already tentative signs that the bare bones of the secretariat in Jakarta will be beefed up.
Member states are going to send permanent ambassadors there, while the secretary general will be empowered to push the agenda and keep plans on track.
The most significant, complex and ambitious part of the plan is economic integration. Asean is promising to let goods, services and investment flow freely. Some of these ideas have been around since the mid-1990s but suffer from half-baked implementation. The secretariat's website last updated progress on free trade and investment in September 1999.