Can Cambodia democratize?

The problem with you, Sir... Hun Sen has the habit of pointing an accusing finger at his rivals and opponents. Cambodia's present political crisis and dilemma can be seen in these two foremost political personalities in the picture above. The man to the left had left his family to join an armed guerrilla movement in the jungle of Cambodia as a teenager, whilst the man to the right had also left his homeland at the age of sixteen for family reasons [his father - Sam Sary - had been executed, allegedly on Sihanouk's order] and to pursue his education in France. By the time the invading Vietnamese installed their client regime in Cambodia in 1979, Hun Sen had been appointed the regime's Foreign Minister at the age of 27 with little grasp of either international diplomacy or how to run the war-torn country's economy. One of his first trips overseas as FM had been to the UN in New York pleading for international recognition and the UN's Cambodian seat for his Vietnamese sponsored administration, a mission in which his delegation had met with complete failure whilst many countries, including many of those in South East Asia, now Asean members as well as most Western governments, opted to have the seat occupied by the KR led anti-Vietnamese resistance coalition government instead. Trained and indoctrinated in the jungle school of real politik and, battled hardened by the brutalities of the battle fields of the country, the Vietnamese had little qualms in treating him as one of their own. Like so many part physically disabled people [he lost an eye during his war years] who experience handicaps in life and, facing restricted scope of movement and therefore forcing themselves to make the best of remaining potentials and abilities, Hun Sen has been applying himself to doing what he knows best, which was denying rival factions political terrains already made safe and put on a platter for him by Vietnamese forces and, shortly before, by Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea; a regime which he had first joined as a sixteen-seventeen year-old and helped to power in 1975. 

Rainsy on the other hand, by most reliable accounts had been a brilliant economist and financier in his adopted country - France - and despite his successful career had chosen to join Sihanouk's Funcinpec when that faction was formed by the latter to reject Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia in the early 1980s. Still a young man, Rainsy was appointed Finance Minister when Funcinpec narrowly won the country's first more or less real democratic election under UN supervision in 1993. One of his memorable assignments as Finance Minister was chasing tax evaders by boat! For this and many other outspoken actions Rainsy quickly earned his reputation as a "maverick" which is 'fair', especially, in the Cambodian culture of hierarchy, patronage and passive compliance, but probably misplaced and unwarranted in the French spirit of  free citizens and within the western philosophy of the questioning individual. Rainsy, nevertheless, considering or in spite of the odds of what he was up against in terms of the task of clearing much of that dead wood of backhand corruption/patronage and commonplace institutional incompetence, won much acclaim from international bodies and observers. I believe he was voted the best Finance Minister during that brief post by at least one prominent Asian opinion institution at that time. I have no doubt that Cambodia's economic life, and by extension, the life of ordinary Cambodians, most of whom are still struggling to survive today, would have been far better improved than it has been up to now had he been allowed to remain in the same post since 1993, or at the helm of overseeing state affairs. It was no big deal that France has lost one of her most precocious talents as that country has so many talents anyway. But it is nothing short of tragic that talent/ human resource starved post-war Cambodia has been prevented from utilising to the full this exceptional and substantial asset, and it is largely thanks to the ingrained small mind and distorted vision of a former KR recruit who still thinks and acts as though he is still entrapped in an army bunker - School of Vice         

    

    

Washington Post

By Editorial Board, Published: September 20 2013

CAMBODIA HAS come a long way since the late 1970s, when the fanatical Khmer Rouge regime killed nearly 2 million of its own people. The country has enjoyed relative stability in recent years, aided by an economic growth rate that averaged nearly 10 percent annually between 1998 and 2008. Though Cambodian per-capita income is still among the lowest in Asia at only $1,000, the country has more than halved the share of its population living below the poverty line since 2007, according to the World Bank. The mortality rate of children under 5 years old has declined by two-thirds since 1998.

What Cambodia still lacks, however, is democracy. More than half of its resurgent population of 15 million is under 23, and the only ruler these Cambodians have known is Hun Sen, who rose to power in 1985 with the backing of Vietnam, which was occupying the country after ousting the Khmer Rouge. Though gentle by comparison with the Khmer Rouge — and still residually popular among beneficiaries of the country’s economic progress — Hun Sen is basically a dictator who relies on force, cronyism, electoral manipulation and external sponsorship to maintain power.

True, his foreign patron has changed over the past 28 years. Now it’s China, which uses military aid and economic investment to buy influence in Phnom Penh, as it once did in Burma. And just as they did for Burma’s military rulers, Chinese weapons and money have helped Hun Sen to fend off demands for greater freedom and political participation, whether they come from his own people or the United States and other Western nations.

That may be changing. Fueled by youth support, a democratic opposition party led by veteran activist Sam Rainsy stunned the regime in parliamentary elections in July. Hun Sen relied, as usual, on his party’s control over the country’s electoral machinery and used state media to spread propaganda about how an opposition victory would lead to civil war. Nevertheless, Sam Rainsy’s party doubled its seats in parliament, falling just seven short of the 62 needed for a majority — according to the official vote count, which Hun Sen’s partisans controlled and which Sam Rainsy plausibly describes as fraudulent.

 

All summer, the opposition has pressed its case for an independent investigation of the election, through the courts and through peaceful demonstrations in Phnom Penh. Hun Sen, characteristically, has deployed his police and military to intimidate his people, leading to a clash last Sunday in which one civilian was shot dead by police and many others were injured. Less characteristically, he has agreed to talk with Sam Rainsy.

 

The situation is tense; in the worst-case scenario, Cambodia’s ruler would launch a crackdown as crushing as the one with which Burma’s generals met a strong opposition showing in that country’s 1990 elections. At the moment, Sam Rainsy is negotiating with the regime — while pressuring it through demonstrations and a threatened boycott of the parliamentary session set to begin Monday. The hope is that his strong election showing at long last provides Cambodia’s people with enough leverage to start a peaceful democratic transition. In the struggle, Hun Sen will undoubtedly count on his old friends in Beijing. The United States must stand no less firmly for a democratic process.