Critics dismiss Hun Xen’s pledge as empty promises

Prime Minister Hun Sen gestures while speaking in Phnom Penh yesterday. Photograph: Pha Lina/Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 15 June 2012
David Boyle and May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Prime Minister Hun Sen made a bold pledge to the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian villagers fighting companies for their homes yesterday, ordering that in every economic land concession across the country, space must be provided for those they would displace.

But last month’s royal book reveals that just over a week after making a similar order in May – to temporarily halt the granting of all economic land concessions – Hun Sen signed off on three agro-industrial concessions in one day.

At a closed conference on the implementation of the national development strategy for 2009-2013, the premier gave provincial governors just six months to demarcate 10 per cent of every agro-industrial, forest or illegally established ELC for villagers to live on.

“And if any provincial governor does not do it, be aware that I will go to put up a tent to measure land for people directly,” he said, adding that where the interests of companies and citizens clashed, priority had to be given to the people.

Anti-graft law set for passage after April 1 [-Another empty promise?]

Thursday, 18 February 2010
Vong Sokheng
The Phnom Penh Post

THE country’s long-awaited Anticorruption Law is likely to be passed soon after the National Assembly reconvenes on April 1, Om Yentieng, senior minister and head of the Anticorruption Unit at the Council of Ministers, said Wednesday.

“NGOs and foreign experts [have been] deeply involved in the issue and now it is time for the government to put its hand into the process to combat corruption,” he told reporters after participating in the opening of an anticorruption training conference in Phnom Penh on Wednesday.

He said 62 members of the government’s Anticorruption Unit were taking part in the three-day training programme to learn how to design an anticorruption survey, and that three further training programmes, run by NGO Pact Cambodia with financial assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), were scheduled between April and June this year.

Flynn Fuller, mission director of USAID, said Wednesday that the US would contribute training and financial assistance, and that Christine Lohrmann, a Danish researcher and expert on corruption in Cambodia, would lead the seminars.

“We know that the Anticorruption Law has been passed by the Council of Ministers and will go to the National Assembly for approval. It is expected that law will meet international standards and will be formally activated this year,” Fuller said.

“But it is only the first step and there will be many more to follow.”

He said the introduction of an anticorruption law would be a major accomplishment for the Cambodian government and implementing the law will be challenging and require a lot of hard work.

Cheam Yeap, senior lawmaker from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, said that the National Assembly has not yet received the draft law on anticorruption from the Council of Ministers, but that he hoped the law would be passed by the end of June this year.

Sand dredging in the Mekong under the day light 5 km from PP while Hun Sen "banned" them: A study of contradiction?

Thank you Mr. O.V. for providing this photo!

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Hun Xen's apologies

Click on the cartoon to zoom in

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

PM: Cambodia to maintain 6% economic growth in 2009 [... more of Hanoi PhD's promises]

SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will try to maintain its economic growth at 6 percent in 2009, in context of the current global financial crisis, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said here on Monday.

The annual inflation rate is expected to drop to single digit this year, he said in a keynote speech for the one-day Business Roundtable, which was hosted by the Economists Conferences to discuss ways for the kingdom to secure sustainable economic development.

"During the last decade of peace and stability, Cambodia achieved high economic growth rate at around 9.4 percent per annum," said the premier in his speech named "Over the Verge of Breakthrough."

"Amazingly, economic growth reached 10.6 percent per annum over the last 5 years, with a peak at 13.3 percent in 2005," he said, adding that the rates stood at 10.8 percent in 2006, 10.2 percent in 2007 and 7.0 percent in 2008.

The inflation rate accelerated to more than 20 percent in the middle of 2008, but dropped to 19 percent at the end of year, he told hundreds of economists, businessmen, entrepreneurs and government officials.

Meanwhile, foreign currency reserves has doubled over the last 2 and half years from 1 billion U.S. dollars in 2006 to 2 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, he said.

The above achievement has helped reduced poverty by over 1 percent annually from 47 percent in 1994 to 30 percent in 2007, he added.

The Economic Conferences is part of the Economist Group, publisher of The Economist magazine, and remains a leading provider of highly interactive meetings, including industry conferences, management events and government roundtables, for senior executives to seek new insights into importance strategic issues.

Pledges, promises, faint praise

Monday, 08 December 2008
Written by Kay Kimsong
The Phnom Penh Post

Observers ask how useful the annual donor ‘ritual' really is

WITH a record of nearly $1 billion in foreign aid pledged, last week's annual donor-government meeting has been lauded as a success by its official participants.

In a statement ending a two-day meeting, Finance Minister Keat Chhon announced pledges totalling $951.5 million in development aid for 2009.

Donors last year pledged $690 million to the Kingdom.

Keat Chhon said China - which only joined the annual meeting last year - had made the biggest pledge of $257 million.

But the donors' requests for reform and the government's promises of action sound sadly familiar, indicating that a decade-old pattern of rewarding inaction with aid has not been broken, observers say.

"It's a ritual, an annual ritual between the government and the international community," said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

"They said exactly the same things last year, the language is the same, the outcome is always the same - we finish the ritual with a stamp of approval [on the government's development plans] and then its back to business as usual," he added.

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday opened the meeting with a new promise to donors that he would fight corruption by passing long-awaited anti-graft legislation as soon as possible.

Speaking on behalf of donors, Cambodia's World Bank country manager, Qimiao Fan, urged the government to quickly pass the anti-corruption law and to use the pledged aid effectively.

These same requests have been made at every donor-government meeting, including by Fan's predecessor, Ian Porter, last year.

"In many ways, it is a ... dance. Donors demand nothing concrete, there is very little expectation," Ou Virak said.

Anti-corruption law: Civil society’s expectations

07 December 2008
By Pen Bona
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French

The International anti-corruption day will be held on 09 December. This is an opportunity for the civil society to send a reminder to the government.

Hun Sen just hit the jackpot with more than $1 billion in international aid pledged for 2009. This good news must not hide the fact that the country is still devoid of an anti-corruption law. Highly expected, regularly announced for several years in a row, the draft law never got out of the government hands. In spite of its delay, civil society groups have not lost hope and they still believe in a positive outcome of this issue. This will be the civil society’s message to be delivered on 09 December, during the International anti-corruption day.

In a communiqué released to the public this weekend, a group of associations wrote that they will campaign in 6 cities (Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Battambang, Siem Reap, Kratie and Svay Rieng) for a quick adoption of a draft law that conforms to international standards. Program for the anti-corruption day includes: speeches, round tables, concerts, radio message broadcasting …

Hun Sen promised at the end of last week to representatives of donor countries that “delay” involved in this issue is due to the fact the anti-corruption law must be in harmony with the new penal code. Yung Kim Eng, the spokesman for the civil society groups, still remains skeptical about Hun Sen’s declarations: “The prime minister maintained this promises for a long time without any results up to now. Nevertheless, we hope that the [anti-corruption] law will see the daylight during the first semester of 2009, otherwise it will be a scandal for our kingdom.”

Cambodian PM promises to fight corruption [... just like he promised an anti-corruption law a decade earlier]

Friday, December 05, 2008
Associated Press of Pakistan

PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday promised foreign donors he would fight corruption as aid donations of nearly one billion dollars were expected to be pledged to the impoverished nation.

Opening a two-day meeting between the government and the country's donors, Hun Sen said he was committed to passing a new anti-corruption law as soon as possible and had already "vigorously combated corruption." "Fighting against corruption is the backbone of sustainable development," Hun Sen told his audience.

Cambodia's long-delayed rights commission

December 04, 2008
By Lao Mong Hay
UPI Asia Online

Column: Rule by Fear

Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government in September 2006 announced that it was going to create a National Human Rights Commission for the promotion and protection of human rights. Making the announcement at a conference, Prime Minister Hun Sen had said that the new body would be based on the Paris Principles governing the status and functioning of such national institutions, and that it would be independent and have adequate powers of investigation and resources to effectively perform its duties.

That announcement was enthusiastically welcomed and Cambodia was declared the fifth country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to establish such a body after Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Both the government and civil society representatives participating in that conference fixed a timeframe for enacting a law in the first half of 2009.

Encouraged by the announcement and the agreed timeframe, the Cambodian Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, which had cosponsored that conference with the government, set out to draft a law for the purpose. A year later, this group came up with a draft and, at the beginning of 2008, submitted it together with the opinions of experts to its government interlocutor, the Cambodian Human Rights Committee.

It took almost a year for this committee to react to the working group’s submission with a decision to cosponsor another conference on the establishment of the new human rights body to be held this month.

However, it is very doubtful whether the government will keep its promise to enact this law in 2009 as agreed in 2006. After its reelection in July, it singled out only three laws to enact as a matter of priority: the penal code, the anti-corruption law and a law on nongovernmental organizations. To date, drafts of these three laws have not been submitted to Parliament and it is likely to take quite some time before they can be adopted.

It is also very doubtful whether this new human rights body will be established in conformity with the Paris Principles, and whether it will have the independence, adequate powers of investigation and resources for performing its duties. These are key issue that will make the body effective in the promotion and protection of human rights.

The prevailing political culture is suspicious of the independence of individuals and legal entities vis-à-vis the government. The ruling elite simply want them under their control. Independent individuals or groupings active in public affairs are invariably branded as “opposition” and are treated as such.

Over the years the government has branded human rights critics, including the U.N. human rights special envoy, as “opposition” and called them names. The courts of laws, whose independence is guaranteed by the Constitution and the king with the assistance of a supreme judicial body, the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, are effectively placed under political control.

In theory, the new body may be given adequate powers to investigate cases. However, in practice it may not be able to exercise them, especially when it has to investigate cases involving the rich and powerful. So far, the police and the courts have not investigated many such cases, which has now created a culture of impunity in Cambodia.

It would be too high a hope to expect the new body to be allocated adequate resources from the national budget to effectively perform its duties. It is likely to suffer the same fate as the courts of law, which have so far received just a fraction of what they need. In this regard, the new body would have to rely on direct funding, which it should be allowed to receive from other sources such as foreign donors.

The new human rights body will largely depend on the courts of law, especially in cases of criminal violations of human rights. When these courts are dysfunctional due to lack of independence, adequate powers and resources, one cannot expect the new body to perform any better.

However, the Cambodian government should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding the establishment of the new human rights body, and the new body should be treated likewise when performing its duties – whenever it sees the light of day.
--
(Lao Mong Hay is a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)

Hun Sen’s Another 5-Year Plan of Doing Nothing?

Hun Sen’s 5-Year Plan Met With Skepticism

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
26 September 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday announced the official plan for the next five years, building on four main pillars of development and political stability, but skeptics said they doubted the government’s commitment.

Topping the priorities for the government, Hun Sen said during the new government’s first cabinet meeting, will be the promotion of the rule of law and protection of human rights and democracy.

The government will also seek to maintain 7 percent annual economic growth, reduce poverty by 1 percent per year, and increase the effectiveness and credibility of public services.

Hun Sen’s administration was voted into office by newly-elected National Assembly lawmakers on Thursday.

“We must promote socio-economic and other responsibilities for all state works,” Hun Sen told nearly 248 members of the new cabinet, who gathered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Friday morning.

Hun Sen also reminded the gathered officials not to maltreat the people.

“We must think of the poor more and more,” he said. “We must promote public services for the people.”

Critics of the plan, which Hun Sen distributed as a booklet, said Friday there were few signs the new government would be different from former administrations.

Human Rights Party President Kem Sokha said he was not optimistic the four priorities of the government would work, because there were no signs of reform.

“What Hun Sen has said in his political platform is only on paper,” he said. “The CPP is good at promising, but the implementation is not reached. So whatever the government promises, if the government cannot reach it, all the ministers and the prime minister should step down.”

Opposition Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Yim Sovan said that if the government failed to reform the judiciary and pass a much-awaited anti-corruption law, “the government platform will fail.”

“I have little belief in the government to reach its political platform,” he said.

Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc, said he believed stability and economic growth were attainable, but he was concerned poverty reduction and improved quality of public service would not be reached.