East Timor has enjoyed observer status since 2011, but President José Ramos-Horta’s visit to Indonesia yesterday could see the small country join the Association in 2023. It is significant that the meeting with his counterpart Joko Widodo took place in the Indonesian capital.
Dili () – After yesterday’s visit to Indonesia by the president of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, the small country’s accession to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), from which it could soon be the 11th member.
In fact, in the last ten years the integration process has been completed, “fulfilling various necessary steps to be an active economy and democracy and thus be an efficient member of ASEAN,” said Ramos-Horta. In 2011 East Timor applied for membership and was granted observer status.
The visit to Indonesia – the largest and most populous country and the first economy of the Association – marked the convergence of intentions and highlighted the good bilateral relations between the two countries. It is significant that the meeting between Ramos-Horta and the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, was held in Bogor, a Jakarta suburb where the presidential palace is located, and that East Timor’s entry into ASEAN could take place in 2023 , the year in which Indonesia will hold the rotating presidency of the organization.
East Timor, a country of approximately 15,000 square kilometers and 1.3 million inhabitants, separated from Indonesia in 1999, after 25 years of fighting for independence. Jakarta had occupied the entire island of Timor in 1976 when Portuguese colonial rule ended. May 20 marked the 20th anniversary of its birth as an independent republic.
It is also significant that entry into ASEAN was achieved during the presidency of Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1996 (received jointly with Monsignor Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, bishop of the capital, Dili, at the time) for his commitment to bring freedom and justice to their land.
For his part, Widodo, a progressive who is trying to revitalize Indonesia, recalled the huge ongoing investments ($818 million) in the energy, banking and communications sectors, as well as the potential of bilateral trade relations, which in 2021 they amounted to 250 million dollars.
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