Daily Inspiration Quote by Sellapan Ramanathan

There is a cool, bureaucratic bluntness to Sellapan Ramanathan's framing: "two tiers of countries" sounds like a neutral observation, but it smuggles in a hierarchy with real policy consequences. As a Singaporean statesman speaking about ASEAN's internal makeup, he is doing two things at once: naming an awkward reality that polite regional rhetoric often softens, and signaling what kind of integration he thinks is feasible.

The phrase "my own perception" is not modesty so much as political cushioning. It marks the claim as personal judgment, lowering the temperature while still putting the classification on the table. Then comes the structuring move: "original ASEAN" versus "new members". That split maps onto a timeline (who was there first) and a power gradient (who has the institutional experience, capital, and administrative capacity). It's a way of describing ASEAN not as a flat family but as a club with founding shareholders and late entrants still meeting the requirements.

"The new members are in various stages of development" is the diplomatic euphemism doing heavy lifting. "Development" is a safe word that avoids naming the more combustible issues: governance, corruption, rule of law, and the uneven ability to implement agreements. It also implies an expectation of convergence over time, which justifies patience and, implicitly, differentiated obligations. The subtext is managerial: ASEAN can expand, but it cannot pretend that one speed fits all without risking paralysis or lowest-common-denominator outcomes. In a region built on consensus and non-interference, tiering becomes an unsentimental workaround.