Cambodia's Tipping Point

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns from self-imposed exile to a crowd of an estimated 100,000 CNRP supporters in Phnom Penh last month. VIREAK MAI

Cambodia’s tipping point

The Phnom Penh Post | Fri, 16 August 2013 | Theary Seng

Dear Editor,

Cambodia is undergoing a phenomenon, the beginning of “Cambodia flourishing”, if you will. Even amidst the high-tension political brinkmanship, Cambodia has reached the tipping point, that is slowly but surely ushering in the Cambodia Spring. 

However, the season of spring flourishing must first be preceded by the season of discontent, the period we are in now.

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2. Social media + smartphones + Khmer Unicode + rising English usage.

The previous elections did not have a public venue where Cambodians, particularly young people, could exchange information and be part of something larger than themselves.

This public venue is closely connected to the growing comfort level and increasing number of Cambodians proficient in English, not only to be on Facebook, but also to have access to a broader array of information (which are mainly in English). 

Even if English is the still the dominant language of social media, the comfort level and increased quality of the Khmer Unicode also facilitated the growing use of social media. As recently as five years ago (the last national elections), Cambodians were mired in the pictorial typing system symbolised by the Limon font. 

Typing Khmer was basically inhibited to drawing a letter in order to compose each word. For anyone to access a Khmer-language document on the internet meant that that document had been uploaded as a JPG or a PDF. 

All to say, as recently as five years ago, Cambodians could not search the internet in the Khmer language, nor write posts or comments on Facebook in the Khmer language, as the pictorial Limon typing system could not facilitate such endeavours. 

A few years ago, the posts and comments on Facebook were written in broken English by the Facebook users; now the majority of posts by Khmer users are in the Khmer language.

The ease of language capability in both Khmer and English is greatly inter-linked with smartphones, which allow for instant, engaging sharing of images along with a narrative in the Khmer Unicode with an exponential multiplying impact.

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4. Father-figure vacuum.
 
The massive outpouring during the passing of King Father Sihanouk Norodom took everyone by surprise, even if some of it was exaggerated high emotions. It brought to consciousness of both Cambodians and the Cambodia watchers of how much King Sihanouk’s rhetoric and treatment of Cambodians over the years as his “children” have shaped our identity as exactly that, oftentimes to our peril in stunting our social and political developmental maturity.

Hun Sen tried excruciatingly hard in filling that void by giving himself grandiose, lengthy titles and naming educational institutions after himself – but basically to no avail, as reflected by the humiliating rejection by the people of him during this July 2013 election.

I’ve stated oftentimes that Cambodia is a land of orphans – literal and emotional ones. We do have a high rate of individuals who do not have a mother, father or both. But even ones who do have a parent, the parent is not parenting, as they themselves are adult infants unconsciously grieving the loss of any parenting figure in their own lives.

Then came Sam Rainsy back from four years of self-imposed exile. Here is a father figure orphaned Cambodians could be proud of to have as their ideal father – intelligent, courageous, dignified, non-violent, nationalist. 

Sam Rainsy returned on the heels of the passing of the King Father, who had left a father-figure vacuum. He naturally, unconsciously filled this vacuum in the psychology of needy Cambodians.

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Theary C Seng is the founding president of CIVICUS, the Center for Cambodian Civic Education.