2nd Episode: A Tale of "A Strongman in A Weak State"

Original post: http://cambodianbrightfuture.blogspot.com/

Good to have chance read your idea (2:05AM). I am lucky to engage in debating with you about this issue. Of course this idea is not yours alone, many Cambodians think like this too.

I concur that this idea exist because having many factors:

1. Cambodian people are still afraid of war because each day Hun Sen and his teamwork talk about Khmer Rouge brutality and social turmoil. In your idea, this propaganda produces positive change slowly in Cambodia like what you think or not? I tell you, it is just the tactic of power men who cling to power until they die. Ok, many Cambodians say that they are not immortal, one day those evil leaders will dies. Yes this is true, but they have to know the bad legacy as well as their clans and their families are not going to die? NEVER DIE!
2. Cambodian people are having one syndrome called "PTSD" that they don't want to see change, they experience enough suffering (now they are living in the well of suffering). You may be like that too. But you can think again that "when you are living in the well of suffering, and maintain that status quo or let it change slowly, is your suffering will be better or worse?)
3. Cambodian people are brainwashed too much by their own leaders since King Sihanouk, Lon Nol, Pol Pot, and finally Hun Sen. Those leaders have never encouraged Cambodian people to development their own capacity, productive personality to have self-determination, self-confidence and self-progress at all.

You have to think twice about this. Human beings in the world have the same desire: hate suffering and love happiness. It is regardless of where they are living: Asia, Europe, Africa or else where. This is simple to understand, no need to finish college or university like you suggested.

Regarding National Congress is important in the chapter of Constitution. This chapter should not be omitted or neglected if Cambodia wants to develop its democracy. But Hun Sen comes up with that proposal because it is certainly reflecting Cambodia as a "Weak State with a Strongman". This proposal shows that Hun Sen is a strongman only to make war, instability, dictatorship and bullying his own people. He is not a strongman to develop democracy, to protect his nation from poverty, to protect foreign invasion or other national catastrophes.

Is he strong or is he weak? Though this small chapter invaluable in the Constitution, he dare not to make a deal and face with it. He should push this chapter into practice in order to build his fame as a democratic leader as well as to play his political model role for future Cambodians. He should not be so cowardice. He is strong to fire anyone from position, he is strong to force or break all public demonstrations, he is strong to defeat all his opponents...but why he is not strong to implement this important chapter in the Constitution.

It will not cause any turmoil like he jeopardized. It depends on good or bad logistics. National Congress is very important to listen the voice of the bottom Cambodians as well as to give them chance to learn on how to develop "self-determination", "self-progress", and "self-reliance". Cambodian leaders should stop the culture of fooling Cambodian people in order to enjoy selfishness, short term benefit or fake benefit for themselves and their clans.

This episode of "A Tale of a Strongman in a Weak State" reflects the continual political culture of Cambodia that has always weakened and fooled the Cambodian people in order to benefit their arrogant power ambition. This culture shows only in a "Weak State" with an "less educated strong leaders".

In brief, last time I mirrored Cambodia as a "weak state" because this country is still not able to protect the weak, the poor, the farmers and the indigenous people. Cambodian political leaders, the middle classes and the elites are still earning their living at the expenses of the poor, the weak, the farmers and the indigenous people.

You are welcome to read and enjoy next 3rd episode in the same tittle "Weak State with a Strongman".

KY

A Tale of "A Strongman in a Weak State"

A Tale of "A Strongman in a Weak State"

Cambodia has been worldwide recognized as a country led by a "strongman". This word tells us many things about the ongoing political issues in Cambodia.

To be fair in judgment, strongman is good for any state when the strongman fully implements his task through legal system, the rule of law, and democratic principles. Strongman can enable state not being chaotic or anarchic. Peace and stability with sound public goods and legal justice are in need for Cambodians.

But how strongman could be categorized in Cambodia? It is hard to define this term of strongman in Cambodia as many poor and the weak have been frequently inhumanized and violated by the governed. For instance, the destitute families living in Dey Krohorm, recently have been abused by the elites. The weak farmers whose lands were grabbed by authority were arrested to put in jail or shot to death in few of them. There are many judicial cases of Cambodian poor people whose cases brought to court, and court settled the cases down by arresting the them to imprison.

How strongman could be when the minor group, the weak or the less fortunate citizens cannot be cared and protected. This case happen only in a "weak state". Cambodia currently is in this case.

Not mentioning the international arena, Cambodia's internal political administration is still very weak. The structure of the government is comparing like a man with "a giant head, but have small legs and small body". How can they stabilize themselves to walk properly?

There are several unusable positions for their patrons in the government to interact with their clients (people) without having proper duties and tasks to carry out. Those officials are just the patron who are supporting their leader, particularly are supporting Hun Sen in order to weaken Hun Sen's rivals in the same party. Not only CPP's members, many opposition's members have been lured to fulfill those positions that can bring leverage for Hun Sen to confront with his internal competitors.

The effectiveness of the government task is so slack and weak. Recently, the implementation of legality to tackle with gambling cannot be dealt through their bureaucrats; that why Hun Sen has to come out and quickly ranted to shut all those gambling parlors without having proper policy designing.

This is just the evidence of a country with its "weak state of a strongman".

There will be more narrative on this issue to deal with complex, disadvantageous political practice in Cambodia.

KY

Website: http://cambodianbrightfuture.blogspot.com/

Suharto's death ends another chapter for Asia's strongmen

In this handout photo released by President Office, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, center, stands by the body of former Indonesian President Suharto at his house in Jakarta, Sunday, Jan 27, 2008. Former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday. He was 86. (AP Photo/President Office, Anung, HO)

01/27/2008
By Aubrey Belford
Agence France-Presse

JAKARTA -- With the death of Indonesia's Suharto, Asia has lost another of its so-called "strongmen" -- the authoritarian and mostly pro-Western rulers who dominated for much of the late 20th century.

From his seizure of power in 1966 until his downfall in 1998, Suharto ruled Indonesia according to a model favoring market-driven economic growth ringed by repressive social control.

It was an approach common elsewhere in Asia too, justified by a notion that "you need a strong ruler to keep order and bring countries into a modern age, an industrialized age," according to Greg Fealy, an academic at the Australian National University.

The politics of the Cold War era, with the constant specter of a communist threat, also "favored strong states and strong leaders," he said, even if it came at the inevitable expense of civil rights.

Some, like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, ostentatiously amassed huge wealth for themselves and cronies. Others, like South Korea's Park Chung-hee, were more personally austere while their countries prospered.

Suharto's contemporaries were not cut entirely from the same cloth either.

Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad were doubtlessly authoritarian, but not to the extent of iron-willed autocrats such as General Ne Win of Myanmar, whose isolationist rule meant that, unlike the others, he was no darling of the West.

Keeping a tough guy image was optional for such strongmen.

After a speech in 1974 by Park was interrupted by an assassination attempt that missed him but killed his wife, the South Korean leader returned to the podium and finished his speech.

Lee, by contrast, famously shed public tears over his fledgling country's forced separation from Malaysia in 1965, a counter-point to the schoolmasterly authoritarianism with which he micromanaged Singaporean life.

Some of Asia's authoritarian old school have remained close. Mahathir and Lee -- both now in their eighties -- flew to the Indonesian capital Jakarta to visit Suharto as he lay dying in hospital.

The common thread connecting Asia's autocrats was a conviction that Western liberal democracy would not work at home and would even be dangerous, Harold Crouch, an Australian Indonesia expert, told Agence France-Presse.

Their argument was that "Asian values" and the special circumstances of an emerging but fragile region necessitated "an elite to run the country," Crouch said.

But hostility to democracy did not stop Western support for many of Asia's authoritarian leaders, whose anti-communism and acceptance of foreign capital led to varying degrees of closeness.

"The Americans certainly welcomed Suharto coming to power because he killed a lot of communists in doing so," Crouch said, referring to a crackdown on the Indonesian Communist Party that killed upwards of half a million.

Still, Suharto had his own style.

While other leaders such as Mahathir adopted a stern persona, Suharto kept his ruthlessness hidden behind a personable and self-effacing exterior, said Bima Sugiarto, a lecturer at Indonesia's Paramadina University.

"He was known as a smiling general. He was very gentle, very polite but on the other hand he had an extreme skill in controlling all political scenarios behind the scenes," he said.

But while many authoritarian rulers were notorious for their corruption -- the Marcos family being an extreme example -- none matched Suharto for the way he institutionalized graft throughout government, Sugiarto added.