JAKARTA – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) remains on track in achieving a unified community within the next five years amid the challenges that the regional bloc is facing now, Philippine Permanent Representative to ASEAN Dr. Orlando S. Mercado said.

Mercado expressed confidence that the ASEAN Community by 2015 is doable, but efforts to increase the level of awareness of the entire ASEAN populace numbering to 560 million should be intensified.

“It is achievable but the question there is to what extent,” the former senator and defense secretary told the Manila Bulletin in an interview at the ASEAN Secretariat at the sidelines of the East Asia Regional Media Programme initiated by the New Zealand, with European Union as co-sponsor.

He cited the need for the 43-year-old regional bloc to keep on reaching out to the whole Asian citizenry, which should be informed about the policies, its institutions as well as its history.

“By 2015, the larger population of these 10 countries has to first feel some empathy, the feeling of belongingness, but that starts from a level of awareness of about what we are You cannot create a community without a feeling of belongingness,” said Mercado, who assumed as country’s envoy to ASEAN last year.

“I was surprised that my own friends who are knowledgeable of the government. They asked me, why are you being sent to Jakarta? Kasi nandun ang ASEAN Headquarters, and they said, ah nandun ba?,” he said.