A Change of Guard

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Friday 31 May 2013

Plenty of Mud, Paucity of Policy, in Election Discourse


Election campaigns are seldom clean.
Political debates stray from policy to the personal: remember President Barack Obama’s country of birth being questioned during last year’s U.S. election?
But policies should prevail at the ballot box.
–News Analysis
So far, in the run-up to July’s national election, the main issues of inter-party contention have not been the country’s struggling health system, under-funded education sector, poverty reduction, job creation or the ever-present cost of corruption.
Rather, the debate has lurched back to old narratives: Who is a Vietnamese puppet? Who is a terrorist? Who loves the monarchy more? And, who saved the country, or caused its destruction, in the 1970s?
While the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has referenced Prime Minister Hun Sen and his colleagues’ Khmer Rouge pasts in their campaign, the CPP for their part has labeled the opposition “genocide-deniers” and terrorists, bent on destroying the monarchy and the nation.
The allegations have prompted a bizarre back-and-forth between both sides, each claiming to abhor the Pol Pot regime more while in turn accusing the other of being Khmer Rouge or Vietnamese sympathizers.
The opposition has long-attacked Hun Sen for his close ties to Vietnam—which helped install him and the CPP’s other top leaders after toppling the Khmer Rouge in 1979—and just this week, at a press conference, SRP lawmaker Kong Korm referred to the Vietnamese with a common ethnic slur: “Yuon.” The CNRP’s self-exiled leader, Sam Rainsy, has also used the derogative to refer to the Vietnamese and frequently calls the CPP Vietnamese puppets.
Pre-empting the descent into pre-election politics as usual, U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi, during his visit to the country last week—without naming any names—called on parties not to use racist rhetoric in the run-up to the election.

Beyond the name-calling, which may escalate to street protests next week, neither the ruling CPP nor the CNRP has mentioned very much about their actual platforms, or how they intend to achieve them.
The CNRP has promised a higher minimum wage for both garment workers and civil servants—something the CPP has labeled a pipe-dream because of the prohibitive cost to the state—while the CPP has both promised a continuation of economic growth if it is re-elected and, alternatively, warned of complete social chaos should they lose.
“It’s mudslinging all round,” said Lao Mong Hay, an independent political analyst, describing the level of political discourse in the run-up to elections. “Trying to discredit your opponent as much as possible.”
“The CPP has no new policies actually, so instead of talking about policies, they’re talking about personalities…. Their platform is too general, the CPP don’t have anything specific [except] emphasizing economic growth and development.”
Mr. Mong Hay was kinder to the CNRP.
“I think the opposition have articulated their ideas rather well. There’s been a move to focused policy, but the problem is they don’t have access to media so [government] media’s drowned out their policies.”
Asked whether he thought Cambodians should be disappointed with the lack of concrete debate on policies that could improve their lives, Mr. Mong Hay hinted that here, at least, the politicians were not entirely to blame.
“That’s the problem with our culture, we don’t have much public spirit. If it doesn’t affect people directly, they don’t care.”
Kem Ley, director of an independent research consultancy in Phnom Penh, described the level of debate as “the same old story,” adding that both parties need to move with the times, leave their old tactics behind, and engage with the electorate, particularly in rural areas.
“The government still uses the same policies as they have for the last 20 years and the opposition…have no new ideas to compete with the government,” he said.
“The opposition always fights against the government on Vietnam…. Since the first election in 1993, the government always blames the opposition of being linked to…terrorists trying to topple the government,” he said.
“Both parties spend a lot of resources to fight each other, but lose time to mention policy, like health care and education,” he said.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The government has the record that people know. Actually after 30 years of Hun Sen we know enough of it. But for the opposition we hear nothing yet, but talks only on salaries for workers in manufacturing sector it promised to increase without saying if they want to impose on employers or not. How about people who work in the service sector? Other spending on salaries for government employees and monthly payments to elderlies in rural area and so on are their main points propagated without explaining how they get those monies? One would like to hear more about economic policy and orientation as well as immigration, health care policy, education etc. On corruption, how the opposition can get rid of it? I would prefer to hear more about Vietnamese companies destroying our forest resources in the north and north-east than the puppetries they are talking for the last 30 years. We should be more concrete on this! We want to be convinced that the country has other options than CPP. The country is in need of a better and solid alternative!

Anonymous said...

8:12 am, your comment is fair enough. However, the opposition CNRP has explained itself very well numerous times on how the get the money to fund their policies.
The CNRP made a calculation and estimated that it would cost about $300-$400 million a year in total to fund their policies.
1. World Banks and U.S embassy estimated that Cambodia lost about $500 million to corruption, including revenues lost from logging, mining, tax collections.
2. Import tax collections (about $6 billion worth of border trades with Vietnam and Thailand) and bribery etc, can generate a lot of taxes, but they are lost through corruption.
3. Cambodia lost about $80 million a year from Angkor Wat revenues - which go to Sok Kong's, So An's and Hun Sen's pockets.
4. Fuel import taxes. Now Sok Kong's Sokimex and Hun Sen's Tela fuel companies enjoy paying very little tax, or don't pay tax at all. If the opposition can collect just 80% of import tax from these companies, the state can earn a lot of revenues.
If the opposition takes the million of dollars lost to corruption and logging, plus import tax collections and revenues from Angkor Wat, the opposition can fund their policies, like the $250 per month civil servants' salary increase and the $10 per month pensions for the old people aged over 65, easily.
Regarding the $150 per month minimum wage for factory workers,it can be funded because the International Labor Organization made a calculation that each garment workers can earn about $350 per month for the company they worked for. So if the company pay the workers $150 per month, the company can still make $200 per month from each worker. Also some companies claimed that they have to pay bribes of $80,000 per month to corrupt officials. if this can be stopped then the company can use these $80,000 to increase the workers' salary.
Another thing is Vietnam has a minimum wage of between $100-$150 per month. Thailand has a minimum wage of about $290 per month. And these two countries exported their garment to European and American markets like Cambodian garment companies. So, if companies in Thailand and Vietnam can pay their workers $290 and $150 per month respectively, then Cambodian companies can also pay at least $150 per month to their workers.

Anonymous said...

In The Cambodia Herald


Knuckleheads screeching like bats
Published: 01-Jun-13 03:02PM | By



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PHNOM PENH (The Cambodia Herald) -- What is it about Cambodian opposition leaders that makes them so inept, so out of touch with ordinary Cambodians? Is it simply because they hold foreign passports? Or is there something more that binds together clowns like Sam Rainsy (a Frenchman) and Mu Sochua (an American)? Clearly, there must be something more. Otherwise, why would such luminaries of the Sam Rainsy Party align themselves with the Human Rights Party of Kem Sokha (a failed chemist) and Pen Sovan (a failed Marxist)?

If there is anything to learn from the past 20 years of political pluralism in Cambodia, it's that opposition politicians are very good at shooting themselves in the foot. At the same time, they have failed to come up with any credible policies. Unless, of course, institutionalized racism can be described as a policy. But for how long will opposition politicians base their election campaigns on appealing to the baser human instincts of igniting hatred against a particular ethnic group?

GET OVER IT

Yes, the Vietnamese did occupy Cambodia after helping to overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. So what? American, British, French and Soviet troops occupied Germany and Austria for 10 years after after World War II. And the American military occupied Japan between 1945 and 1952. The point here is that most Germans, Austrians and Japanese got over it and moved on. Opposition leaders in Cambodia have done neither even though it's now 24 years since the Vietnamese withdrawal in 1979.

Today, an entire generation of young Cambodians have no first-hand experience of living under a military occupation (unless the presence of multinational forces under UNTAC in 1992 and 1993 can be described as an occupation). It's probably true that many in the older generation will always have mixed feelings about the period from 1979 to 1989, just like the much older generations of Germans, Austrians and Japanese. But does that justify opportunistic racism by politicians, may of whom weren't even living in Cambodia at the time?

LESSON FROM JAPAN

In some ways, the knuckleheads of today's opposition in Cambodia resemble the troglodytes of yesterday's opposition in Japan, as embodied defined by the now-defunct Socialist Party of Japan. The troglodytes were an ancient primitive people believed to have lived in caves in Ethiopia. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described them as speaking an unintelligible language that sounded like "the screeching of bats." Today, the term is used to describe people who are deliberately ignorant or old fashioned, like the people who used to run the Socialist Party of Japan.

Founded in post-war Japan, the Marxist-Leninist party was for decades the biggest opposition party in Japan. Allied with North Korea, it strongly opposed the presence of American military bases in Japan. It even opposed the existence of the Japanese military not to mention Japanese participation in peacekeeping forces in Cambodia.

The Japanese opposition party's shrill anti-Americanism was popular only with a small minority of Japanese. It was never strong enough to win an election. It briefly headed a coalition government in the mid-1990s but became so out of touch with Japanese voters that it dissolved into political oblivion in 1996. The way the opposition is acting in Cambodia these days suggests it's heading for a similar fate.