Reimagining Asean? Let’s start with a common score card

Deadly ‘game’: Protesters make the iconic three-finger salute as they take part in a flash mob demonstration against the Myanmar military’s coup, on Sunday in Yangon. — AFP

CHANGING gear and shifting from emergency planning to mainstream policymaking can be a tricky affair.

While under pressure by an outbreak of a pandemic, you are forced to think in long and bold terms. Once the calamity subsidies or just keeps hitting as hard as before but at the same time it somehow becomes internalised as part of the “new normal”, policymakers tend to revert to the old standard working modalities.