Cambodia pinned down by “Global Integrity”

20 Feb 2009
By A.L.G.
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French

The Washington-based NGO gave a very low score to Cambodia: 46 on a scale of 100, while indicating that law curbing down corruption was not put into use. The report, which contains several estimates, is in itself an “almost unique tool” in the world.

“Cambodia suffers from a range of governance and anti-corruption challenges, including vote-buying and political financing scandals to privatizations that have tended to favor a small group of wealthy elites,” Global Integrity noted in its report made available on Wednesday 18 Feb.

Cambodia earned a score of 46 on a scale of 100, trailing behind Iraq (53), Cameroon (56), Georgia (59), but Cambodia is ahead of Somalia (35) and Angola (41). Cambodia’s judicial system aiming at fighting corruption earns a score of 58, however, for the application of the law, Cambodia scores a mere 30 points. Global Integrity which uses a set of indicators to perform its study, estimated that its margin of error is 0.94%.

For its “integrity indicators score card,” in almost all fields, Cambodia earns scores that are “weak” or “very weak”. This is the case for news media, public access to information, and civil society organizations. Global integrity evaluations are based on multiple choice questions (such as, “civil society activists, can they work under security on the corruption issue?”) or based on a 0 to 100 scale (such as, the assertion “in practice, citizens can organize themselves as unions” received a score of 50%).

The only field that obtained a “strong” score relates to the “anti-corruption law” which refers to UNTAC-era laws forbidding bribes and embezzlements.

As reported in another section of its report, the (new) anti-corruption law was never put to vote for adoption, and thus, for the time being, it has no effect whatsoever. In December 2008, during a forum held between the government and donor countries, Hun Sen promised that the anti-corruption will see the daylight “after the adoption of the penal code.”

The 2008 general election was also taken into consideration, there, “Global Integrity” interviewed NGOs and the opposition SRP and HRP parties. From these interviews, dated from last summer, Global Integrity gave a 50% score to the issue of opposition representation in the parliament, and, in its report, Global Integrity noted: “the opposition parties contested [the results of the general election] and up until now, at least the SRP and the HRP intend to boycott the first National Assembly session.”

Global Integrity failed to mention that on 24 September 2008, 25 out of 26 SRP elected MPs had finally participated to the inauguration session of the parliament, after they obtained guarantees from Hun Sen regarding the role of the opposition.

The report which also touched upon press freedom, mentioned the “Cambodge Soir” crisis which took place in June 2007: “Concrete incidents show the grave consequences from serious irregularities implicating the government or powerful and influential people in Cambodia. Among these incidents, the firing of Soren Sowell [the journalist name is in fact Soren Seelow] by the owners of “Cambodge Soir” after Sowell published excerpts from a controversial Global Witness report titled “Cambodia’s Family Tree.”

To explain corruption in Cambodia, Global Integrity quoted opposition leader Sam Rainsy, and it also attacks Hun Sen “who is power for the past 33 years,” i.e. since 1976, a year in which the KR was still ruling. In its historical chapter, Global Integrity indicated that, it was only in 1989 that the government “puts an end to the ban on religious practice, and reinstituted Buddhism as the state religion.” The presence of the Vietnamese troops in Cambodia between 1979 and 1989 was not qualified as “occupation” by Global Integrity.

Hun Sen, who became PM in 1985, a few weeks after the death of Chan Si, his predecessor, was not PM until Sept 1989, unlike what the Global Integrity’s “history of corruption” noted in the annex of the report. The practice of Buddhism, which was forbidden under the KR regime, was re-introduced since the first weeks of January 1979, and it became the state religion again in 1993 [cf. Solomon Kane (2007), Khmer Rouge Dictionary, Isarec].

In its press release dated 18 Feb 2009, Global Integrity claims that “the estimates for each country included in the report, offer one of the evaluations of anti-corruption mechanism among the most detailed and supported by available proofs in the world.”