Stop giving Hun Sen power to rule

HOW MUCH LONGER WILL CAMBODIANS TOLERATE SUCH ABUSE BY HUN XEN's REGIME?

May 4, 2011
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

 In the face of Hun Sen's dictatorship, which is a source of many societal ills, it's crucial that Cambodians of all political persuasions remain vigilant. Recall Buddha's words: "To be idle is a short road to death."

Cambodia has a history that dates back more than 2,000 years. I was born, raised and acculturated in that land until 1961, when I spent my senior year of high school under the auspices of a student exchange program in Ohio. I returned to Cambodia after graduation, but came back to the U.S. for college and graduate school, earning my B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science.

School and experience have shaped my political outlook on individual rights, freedom and the rule of law. My cousin, who graduated from a medical school in East Germany, pronounced that my political views were proof that I was  "born before my time ." I dislike dictatorship in any circumstances; I hate it as a form of government.

Rights and liberty

English philosopher John Locke wrote that all people are born equal and have a natural right to defend their "life, health, liberty, possessions." The inadequacy of the natural right to defend led them to join in a civil society to solve their problems.

Montesquieu, the French social commentator during the Enlightenment, taught: "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor."

I was enthralled that James Madison, the son of a Virginia tobacco planter, at 37 wrote in his Federalist Paper No. 47 in 1788 that "No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value" than the separation of powers.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may just be pronounced the very definition of tyranny," he wrote, and "the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct." Checks and balances, he argued, protect individual rights and freedom from the tyranny of "elective despotism."

The nemesis

Hun Sen is a despot who rules with unconstrained authority and unlimited powers. He rules because he can. He's in control of Cambodia's material resources (natural and financial), its economic system, its communication and transportation means. He's in command of the state's sanctions, security forces and the military.

We can blame the world community for failing to implement the 1991 Paris Peace Accords that commit the signatories (18 participating governments and the United Nations) "to promote and encourage respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cambodia." But the four warring Cambodian factions were also signatories. They didn't make good use of the rare international accords to build their future.

Hun Sen rules because, unfortunately, the most important source of power, the populace, generally thinks Hun Sen and his CPP have the right to rule. Their commands are obeyed. Election after election, the populace gives its votes to Hun Sen and the CPP, thereby legitimizing them -- just as opposition parties legitimize them through their participation in elections that they can't win.

Ironically, the state institutions that fuel Hun Sen's dictatorship are filled with people who have sufficient skills and know-how to keep Hun Sen in power. His minions employ divide-and-rule tactics against the opposition, individuals and groups; opposition groups fight and compete among themselves.

When submission, obedience, and cooperation are withdrawn, Hun Sen and the CPP will fall. Only Cambodians can accomplish this.

Crushing a protest

Cambodians are not as passive and docile as some may think. Weak and helpless, perhaps, but no person accepts tyranny indefinitely. Weakness and helplessness are able to be modified, but a change in attitudes and values needs to come first.

Log on to see YouTube videos on forced evictions in Cambodia. Police beat up residents of Boeung Kak Lake in Phnom Penh as their houses were bulldozed while a fumigator sprayed them with a white substance. Other videos affirm Cambodians have organized civil protests.

On April 21, as Hun Sen's military battled Thai "aggressors" at the Preah Vihear temple area. His riot police beat three women unconscious with sticks and electric prods, beat an elderly woman about the head and dragged other women protesters into a police van. The attack was launched against perhaps 100 Boeung Kak Lake residents who gathered in front of Phnom Penh city hall to protest the planned eviction of 1,500 families from their land for the development of a luxury resident complex by the Shukaku firm, reportedly owned by CPP senator Lao Meng Khim.

The Sam Rainsy Party's April 25 letter to Phnom Penh authorities concerning a demonstration by 200 people on April 30 in support of the protesters was a breath of fresh air. The SRP has abandoned civil demonstrations for some time.

Also notable was the April 28 broadcast by Voice of America about the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union's announcement of its plan to gather 3,000 workers in Phnom Penh to march in the International Labor Day parade on May 1, despite Hun Sen's ban.

In the face of Hun Sen's dictatorship, which is a source of many societal ills, it's crucial that Cambodians of all political persuasions remain vigilant. Recall Buddha's words: "To be idle is a short road to death."

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