The world held its breath last week for one of the most widely anticipated events in years as nearly 33 million Britons went to the polling booths to decide on the fate of their country and possibly the 60-year old European Union.
The final outcome was in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the EU, a decision that plunged global equity and commodities markets into a tailspin after earlier projections suggested the Remain camp and the status quo would narrowly prevail.
Years of difficult negotiations now lie ahead for Britain. There are already fears that Brexit could be followed by similar campaigns in other nations. The first shot was fired Friday afternoon by a Dutch politician who thinks his country would be better off outside the EU.
Then there is the question of Scotland, whose political leaders said pointedly that their compatriots "voted for Europe". That suggests there will soon be a movement to stage another independence referendum, with possibly dire consequences for the future of the UK.
The full economic impact of the Brexit vote will become clearer in the weeks and months ahead. It could take a little longer to get a sense of how overall British and EU trade with Asia might be affected. Meanwhile, we are left to contemplate what lessons such a momentous event could teach us about the future of our own 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Like the EU, which has worked hard on integration for six decades with many successes and some failures along the way, Asean has been pursuing dreams of a closer economic community for almost five decades. The Asean journey has been a very different one, however, given the lower levels of economic development, along with assorted conflicts, intra-state wrangling and the influence of larger powers.
The Brexit referendum was based purely on domestic issues. Britain was not part of the single currency, nor was it part of the Schengen visa agreement that unites many other EU countries. In Asean, however, we have seen how solidarity can be threatened by the influence of outside powers -- China and the United States in particular -- on some individual member states.
And unlike the EU, Asean members have little in common as an incentive to keep the group intact. We do not have a single visa system or a single currency, nor do we have a powerful EU-style parliamentary body overseeing issues of concern to members.
The Asean Secretariat is little more than a paper tiger with no power to push through rules and regulations that would affect the region. Nor does Asean operate on the basis of a majority vote, but instead it is very much consensus-based. Hesitation by a single member can paralyse the collective decision-making process. We saw that happen with Cambodia in 2012 and Laos this year. In both cases they were bullied by Beijing into toeing the Chinese line on the South China Sea.
What, I wonder, is the glue that is keeping Asean together? And what if, one fine day, a country such as Singapore, which can certainly survive without Asean, decides to opt out? The populace of Singapore probably would be more than happy to walk out, although the impact on Asean's other developing members would be far greater.
Brexit stands as an example of how the population of a country prefers to place their own interests ahead of the region's, and this should be a wake-up call for members of Asean and the dormant Asean Secretariat.
The Asean Secretariat appears to have done next to nothing to promote regional integration. After all the hype and propaganda leading up to the formation of the Asean Economic Community on Dec 31, 2015, what have we heard since then? Has the average citizen seen any visible impact, or does he or she even care?
The Brexit decision was also a slap in the faces of big business and big-city elites in the UK, who believe they have done well in the EU, while their counterparts in small towns and the countryside clearly held different views.
Similarly, the business and political elites in Southeast Asia who support the AEC need to show how integration is going to improve lives and opportunities for the great mass of citizens, not just a few large corporations.
At the end of the day, the thing that matters the most to people is how any deal affects them, and if there is a negative impact on a great majority, then at some point we should not be surprised to hear words such as Singxit or Thaixit.