Our children profit from our actions

The monkey eats the rice, then smears rice on the goat's mouth (A 2003 Cartoon by Sacrava)

November 3, 2010
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)

"People power" is not beyond reach in Cambodia. Skeptics misunderstand people power and equate it with bloody rebellion. Khmers are Buddhists -- gentle and placid, who don't rise against a ruthless dictatorship.

The Albert Einstein Institution, committed to the defense of freedom, says: "Nonviolent action (also sometimes referred to as people power, political defiance and nonviolent struggle) is a technique of action for applying power in a conflict by using symbolic protests, noncooperation and defiance, but not physical violence."

My nine years (1980-1989) in the Khmer resistance against Vietnam's military invasion and occupation took me near death's door many times, but I never believed we could defeat the Hanoi armies that brought the Americans to a negotiations table earlier. But we did believe that an effective Khmer resistance would bring Hanoi to the negotiations table. That, in fact, happened.

Except, the Khmer nationalists never prepared themselves for post-1991 Paris Peace Accords.

Adding to the detrimental lack of careful strategic planning with necessary "next steps," they were trapped in denial, blaming, as many simply realigned themselves for political positions.

The game of "svar pa'at bai loeu mo'at po-pe" (monkey smears rice on a goat's mouth) continued until today: The monkey ate the farmer's rice and smeared rice on a goat's mouth so the goat would be blamed for eating the rice; the farmer didn't know better and took out his anger on the goat, forgetting that goats don't eat rice.

Population has power

I stood before my introduction to political science classes for 13 years, driving home the same point every semester, that a government's "right to rule" is based on the people putting it in power.

In a democracy, an election is free, fair and secret. Having given the government the right to rule, the people feel morally responsible to respect it, obey its laws and commands and, as such, they bestow upon it its legitimacy.

Dr. Gene Sharp writes in "From Dictatorship to Democracy," that "Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones."

Culture, belief

Culture and belief do matter.

A culture that emphasizes obedience, loyalty and order produces citizens different from a culture that promotes creativity, independence and self-respect.

Thus lambs and lions emerge.

The lambs don't disturb the status quo -- societal norms demand resolute obedience and unquestioned loyalty. The lions use creative ways to be independent and free.

President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg address declared that America's representative democracy, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

A government of the people is one that comes from the people themselves, not from the ruling class; officials come from the citizenry. A government of the people that comes from the people operates for the good of the people, not for the good of the ruling class.

A government by the people is one in which the people are the ultimate decision-makers. They send representatives to make their wishes known in decision-making. But representatives can't change the U.S. Constitution, only "we, the people" can.

A government for the people is one that does things for the good of the people; the only purpose of government is to make their lives better. The world's peoples want basically the same thing: Food, clothes, a roof, security, decent health, a level of contentment, an ability to meet their basic needs -- in peace and security.

Dictatorships

Ironically, the population and the society are two necessary sources of dictators' political power. A democracy uses its political structure -- the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches, with power to regulate, extract and distribute -- to ensure the people's well-being.

A dictatorship uses its political structure, with the same regulatory, extractive and distributive power, to ensure the people's obedience, submission and cooperation, so dictators can stay in power.

With a culture of self-evident truths, the people fight when their equality and rights are compromised. But, in a culture that espouses leader-follower, superior-inferior, patron-client, master-servant relationships, the people obey, submit and cooperate.

Deny power sources

Dictators' feet are not made of immovable clay. Dictators don't stay powerful always. Likewise, democracy and rights fighters don't have to remain weak forever.

Sharp reasons: If dictators stay in power because they succeed in extracting the people's obedience, submission and cooperation, by denying the dictators their sources of power, they become powerless.

Dictators control state institutions. But institutions are made up of people who steer them. People of high principles and beliefs would find ways to steer the institutions -- including the feared courts and security police -- away from tyranny.

Sure, people are strongly politically and socially conditioned to obey and submit. But why can what is conditioned not be unconditioned? Is there anything unchangeable?

I wrote before that my refusal to submit to blind obedience landed me in hot political waters. So? A saying goes, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

I don't pretend to have answers to everything; I don't. But people can learn what benefits all; unlearn what's detrimental. We know what those things are. Start, we must. The time to start was yesterday. Cry not for missed opportunities. We won't see the benefit of our actions. Our children and their children will!

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.