Kuala Lampur, Oct. 28 -- When the gavel finally drops on Malaysia's Asean Chairmanship at the close of the 47th Asean and Related Summits on October 28, 2025, many will assume the cycle has ended. They would be wrong. Why?

In truth, Asean does not operate on the logic of endings. Its Chairmanships are not terminal events; they are chapters in a long continuum of collective leadership - where each host carries forward the unfulfilled mandates, shared aspirations, and policy linkages of the last.

When Laos ended its Chairmanship of Asean on October 11, 2024, last year, issues and points of actions agreed in that year and the year before were carried into 2025; the same logic holds. In fact, Malaysia declared that it has satisfied all 18 P...