Timor-Leste out to prove cynics wrong as Asean membership nears

Some worry that the young nation will be a drag on the regional grouping, but its president seeks to dispel such doubts.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

There is almost no latency in Timor-Leste's President Jose Ramos-Horta's response when I ask him whether he was surprised that Asean leaders agreed for his country to formally join as the grouping's 11th member as early as its next meeting in October.

After all, it would have been perfectly understandable if the consensus had been that the country could do with a bit more time to fulfil outstanding conditions for accession, rather than fixing a provisional deadline that would inevitably come with pressure.

"No, I was not surprised," President Ramos-Horta said matter-of-factly.

As he put it, Asean had unanimously agreed to admit the region's youngest nation in 2022, and developed a road map for its full membership. So why should anyone be surprised about this latest decision that, for the first time, puts a provisional date on accession? The decision was made at the recently concluded Asean leaders' summit in Kuala Lumpur.

"As you know, a road map has a beginning and an end. It doesn't go on indefinitely, right?" Mr Ramos-Horta told me in a recent interview.

Yet if the uber-niche Asean-watching commentariat is to be believed — and its murmurings have been falling on my ears, including on the sidelines of the recent Shangri-La Dialogue — the date-setting wasn't as seamless as portrayed. Holdout voices still wonder whether Timor-Leste is ready for admission in 2025, whether it's all too rushed. Mr Ramos-Horta betrayed none of this concern.

The President explained that the 2025 accession target was Timor-Leste's own, set after the landmark 2022 decision.

Following the back-to-back return to politics of Mr Ramos-Horta and fellow independence hero, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, in 2022 and 2023 respectively, both men decided that 2025 would be the right moment for accession.

"We felt we should not leave it only for Asean leaders to decide," he explained. "They needed to see decisiveness from us."