Five months since the military toppled a democratically elected government in Myanmar, ASEAN has not been able to appoint a special envoy to help defuse the member country's political crisis — and a major obstacle seems to be disunity within the group.
Disagreement among Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries over the envoy's selection appears to be helping Myanmar's military, which wants to buy time to solidify its rule, but that has also led to frustrations for some within ASEAN who want to engage in the issue more actively.
Leaders of the 10-member group had agreed at a summit in the Indonesian capital Jakarta in April on a "five-point consensus" that included appointing a special ASEAN envoy to Myanmar. The envisaged envoy would try to mediate in the dialogue process between various parties in the country — where pro-democracy forces were ousted from power in the Feb. 1 coup, with civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi put under house arrest.