Cambodia - an April Fool's democracy

By Alanta Colley
Posted Wednesday, 30 May 2007

In Cambodia, the eve of the election is quietly known as “the night of the barking dogs”. The “dogs”; politicians and their henchmen; make their rounds, dispensing gifts and threats, winning votes through fear and favour.

This year, the night before Cambodia’s April Fool’s Day elections, the dogs barked in unison for Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). As the polling booths shut, so did Cambodia’s chance to rid itself of this ex-Khmer Rouge military dictator. Hun Sen and his faction marched to victory with 98 per cent of the vote. The only other “democracy” recorded receiving such compelling voter support for a single party was Iraq, under Saddam Hussein.

The rise and rise of Hun Sen’s Empire marks the fall of the great democratic experiment in Cambodia. The country remains a democracy in name only; a thin shell hiding the power and corruption of the CPP beneath its surface.

Democracy arrived in Cambodia in a blaze of glory in 1992, when 20,000 international soldiers and civilians, under the auspices of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), descended upon the small Asian country.

The mission was to be an international symbol of the new world order. The Cold War had ended; America's democracy had won over Soviet communism. Cambodia was the lucky recipient of exported democracy - a poultice to assuage the wounds received from years under the bloody Khmer Rouge.

The 1993 election went smoothly and FUNCINPEC (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif, which translates to "National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia") under Prince Norodom Ranariddh was victorious, receiving over 45 per cent of the vote. The UN, in a celebratory mood packed up and went home, declaring the whole event a great success.

However, under Khmer law, no party could rule with less than a two-thirds majority. Hun Sen’s CPP, which received less than 38 per cent of the vote, threatened a secession of the eastern provinces of Cambodia if Ranariddh did not share the victory. From the days of the Khmer Rouge a faction in the military and many other friends in influential positions in Cambodian society backed Hun Sen. His threats had clout.

FUNCINPEC submitted to a coalition government with the CPP. Cambodia became the only country which could boast not only one, but two prime ministers: First Prime Minister Ranariddh, and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Hun Sen was later asked to reflect on what UNTAC had brought through their good efforts in Cambodia. He replied simply, “AIDS”. Hun Sen paid no thanks to the UN for their efforts to install democracy in Cambodia.

Since that first election the CPP has tightened its grip on Cambodia. Hun Sen has consolidated his coterie of thugs and villains. Cambodia’s standing army grew and became the largest per capita in the world. Compulsory conscription was introduced for Cambodian men between 18 and 30, and military spending consumed almost half the annual budget. Hun Sen’s faction became an unassailable force inside and outside of Parliament.

With this power, a decade later, Hun Sen set about ironing out the last wrinkles of opposition to his empire.

In 2005 opposition leader Sam Rainsy spoke up in parliament about the CPP’s attempts to assassinate him. The CPP quickly responded by passing a bill retroactively revoking Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity. Hun Sen then issued a $5 million defamation suit against him. Sam Rainsy fled the country, and two of his ministers were imprisoned.

In the months leading up to this election yet another political opponent was forced to flee the country. Prince Ranariddh, the former democratic leader of Cambodia, left the country after charges were brought against him. While married to Princess Marie, Ranariddh had publicly acknowledged a long-term relationship with another woman. With this in mind the CPP pushed legislation through parliament outlawing adultery.

Unofficially, as parliamentarians chatted among themselves, they referred to the law as the “Ranariddh legislation”. Within hours of it being passed by the National Assembly Ranariddh was charged.

The “monogamy law”, in reality, has the potential to see most of the Cambodian male population put behind bars. “Sweet hearts” and prostitutes are a broadly accepted aspect of Khmer male culture. The stooges of the CPP are certainly not exempt from this. All have mistresses. Yet few arrests have taken place since the Prince was charged. The law was merely one more example of how Hun Sen manipulated the law to ensure his own hegemony.

Outside parliament similar CCP plots to manipulate this election process took place. Efforts to monitor and observe the election process were thwarted with the CPP’s devious tricks.

The Committee for Free and Fair Elections (COMFREL) acts as an independent election watchdog. With more than 11,000 polling booths across the country; COMFREL is responsible for mobilising thousands of Khmer and international volunteers to visit the polling booths and report any incidents of violence or perversion of the voting procedures. COMFREL’s monitors report back to COMFREL by sending text messages to a COMFREL number which records all reports on a computer database.

Two days before the election, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) - a body made up almost exclusively of CPP party members - made an announcement. Text message services would be shut down up until the hour the polling booths closed. The NEC stated that this was to stop political parties spamming party propaganda in the “tranquility period” before the election. The real victim however was COMFREL and their monitoring activities. COMFREL had no way to instantaneously record the assessments of their thousands of monitors.

The NEC knew COMFREL’s monitoring strategy many months before. With the monitors muted COMFREL could not quickly dispatch additional observers to polling stations where trouble ensued.

Perversions and disruptions at booths went unrecorded and thwarted COMFREL's efforts to report the election.

Frustrating the efforts of COMFREL’s monitoring strategy was unquestionably an advantage to the CPP. The CPP boasts a long history of employing dubious and illegal methods of influencing results at the polling booth.

Booths with traditional swings against the CPP often receive visits from armed thugs with shady connections to the CPP. They cause disturbances outside the booth, scaring away prospective voters. In some provinces, Khmers have been scared out of voting after CPP candidates told them that the CPP had satellites that could see who they voted for. They were told they would be punished if they voted against CPP.

In a country where roughly 30 per cent of the population are illiterate crafty politicians can easily pull the wool over people’s eyes. Fear is by far the most effective electioneering tool. Cambodians know better than most what a government is capable of doing to its own citizens. The Khmer Rouge period hangs like a darkened shroud over the country still with the Khmer Rouge, 30 years later, still unpunished.

Yet despite the corruption, violence and fear Cambodians do want to vote. Sixty-five per cent of those registered to vote made the long trek to their provinces to make their contribution to democracy. Compared to long-established democracies of the UK and America, this is significantly high.

Each generation of Cambodians chip away at illiteracy levels and grow more politically conscious. Yet at the same time, Hun Sen's power base grows in strength. In a country with absolutely no social welfare system; corruption is a means of survival. It is entrenched at every level. While corruption remains, so will the CPP. While a vote can be still be purchased for roughly 25 cents (US) no change can be expected in Cambodia.

In a country that has known no past other than the reign of emperors, the weighty burden of colonialism and the barbarism of a murderous communist force, perhaps the end result of the democratic experiment is not so surprising. The culture of power and violence entrenched long ago did not dissipate overnight in one expensive UN operation. They merely adapted to a different system. It has happened many times before.

Cambodia bodes ill for the similar experiments of nation building in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that polling booths, monitors and peacekeepers are all very well but cannot alone displace embedded hierarchy, powerbrokers and mobsters. These result from far more systemic problems of poverty and instability.

Cultural norms of hierarchy, religion and tradition also contribute to the perpetuation of such power structures. It’s time we abandoned the concept of democracy as a universal band-aid solution, applicable to any country and situation. The reality is far more complex and so should be the response.

First published in The Diplomat on May 28, 2007.

Labels: April Fool's democracy

Labels: hun sen

Labels: Women

Labels: hun sen, journalist

Labels: eviction, landgrabbing

Cambodia's Mobile Market is Growing at an Annual Rate of Around 35%
Tuesday May 8, 1:00 pm ET

Continuing to shun fixed-line services, Cambodia's healthy mobile market has passed the 1.5 million subscriber milestone and was continuing to grow at an annual rate of around 35% coming into 2007. Fixed-line services were languishing at around 42,000, with no sign of a revival in interest in this segment of the market. Surprisingly, given the apparent interest in communications, Internet penetration has remained particularly low, with the services on offer being notably expensive in comparison to other countries in the region. As the country's efforts are directed towards strengthening its telecommunications infrastructure, Cambodia must continue to address its political problems and build its economy. Now that the country has entered a period of relative political stability, an increased effort is required to put the necessary administrative institutions and regulations in place. The telecom sector remains in need of serious regulatory reform. The good news is that foreign investor confidence appears to have returned and there are many positive signs that the economy is strengthening in a sustained manner.

After years of economic struggle, Laos has finally been reporting positive news on this front. With a number of substantial hydro-electric and mining projects now a reality, the country is at last moving forward in a confident fashion. Attention is now turning to building its national infrastructure, including telecommunications. Laos still only had a fixed line teledensity of less than two telephones per 100 people by early 2007. More foreign investment is needed to boost the telecoms sector and, most importantly, given that it is a relatively small market; the government must be judicious in deciding and licensing how this investment happens. The Lao Telecom joint venture formed by the government with the Thai company, Shinawatra, in 1996 was a wasted opportunity. Lao Telecom allowed the five year period of market exclusivity to pass without any serious attention to infrastructure building. When the market was opened up to competition in 2002, foreign capital finally started to flow into the sector, although not as much as the government would have liked. The mobile phone market took off in early 2003, with the number of subscribers increasing sevenfold in just 2 years. The Lao telecom sector still has many issues to address. Despite the recent rapid opening up of the market, the regulatory progress continues to lag behind development and has the potential to derail the progress already made if reform is not speeded up.

After a period in which foreign investors appeared to be avoiding Vietnam's telecom sector, the country has become the target for a fresh new round of investor interest. This follows a period in which the government seemed content to 'go it alone'. During this time, the introduction of a limited level of competition into the telecoms market, combined with a generally improved economic climate, saw some healthy growth in the sector. More recently the move to allow an increase level of 'equalisation' (the Vietnamese government's word for 'privatisation') has sent a clear message to investors that the rules are changing in a positive way. The investment mood has been further boosted with Vietnam finally winning accession to the World Trade Organization, a step that was formally confirmed in early 2007. This adds to the already positive climate for the telecom sector expansion. As well as strong growth in its mobile sector, there has been equally strong - and some might say, surprising - growth in the country's fixed line subscriber base. Fixed-line services have been continuing to expand at an annual rate of 100%; fixed teledensity has passed 32%. At the same time, the government's reticence about the Internet has not stopped this segment of the market gaining a strong foothold. Internet user penetration was running at a healthy 18% in early 2007. Increased foreign investment remains the key to overall expansion. It is still not totally clear what form the government's involvement in the telecom sector will take.

Key highlights:

-Vietnam's mobile market had passed the 16 million subscriber mark coming into 2007. The annual growth rate in this market segment was running at around 85% and looked set to continue.

-The 2006 year saw a remarkable surge in Vietnam's broadband Internet market with subscriber growth running at an annual rate of almost 200%. Interest in broadband services was finally picking up; but broadband penetration remains low (2% of households) we can expect continuing strong growth in this market segment.

-Vietnam received a boost to its economy generally and the telecom sector in particular with its accession to the WTO in early 2007.

-In Cambodia, mobile services continue to dominate the local market; in what is still a relatively poor country, (GDP per capita of US$430 in 2006), more than 1.5 million people subscribe to a mobile service. The market is continuing to expand at around 40% per annum.

-According to ministry figures, mobile subscribers in Laos passed the one million mark in December 2006. Recent growth in mobile has been rapid in this country of only 6 million people and the market looked set to continue to expand at an annual rate of about 40% in 2007/08.

-All three countries are making some progress with regulatory change and structural reform within their respective telecom sectors. To the outside observer, however, progress is often painfully slow. This can cause serious concern among those companies wishing to invest.

Mobile penetration and annual growth - 2007

Country Penetration Annual growth

-Cambodia 15% 37%

-Laos 21% 40%

-Vietnam 30% 60%

Topics Covered

1. CAMBODIA

1.1 Key statistics

1.2 Telecommunications market

1.3 Regulatory environment

1.4 Telecommunications infrastructure

1.5 Internet market

1.6 Mobile communications

1.7 Broadcasting market

2. LAOS

2.1 Key statistics

2.2 Telecommunications market

2.3 Regulatory environment

2.4 Fixed network operators in Laos

2.5 Telecommunications infrastructure

2.6 Internet

2.7 Mobile communications

2.8 Broadcasting market

3. VIETNAM

3.1 Key statistics

3.2 Telecommunications market

3.3 Regulatory environment

3.4 Telecommunications infrastructure

3.5 Fixed network operators in Vietnam

3.6 Internet market

3.7 Broadband market

3.8 Content and e-services

3.9 Mobile communications

3.10 Broadcasting

3.11 Forecasting

4. GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS

Tables and Exhibits

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c56097

Research and Markets
Laura Wood
Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
Fax: +353 1 4100 980

By Erika Kinetz
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; A14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701870_pf.html

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, May 7 -- In a country where half the students who enter grammar school never finish, Cheak Socheata, 18, is among the most privileged of her generation: She made it to college.

But even Cheak, a first-year medical student at Phnom Penh's University of Health Sciences, has learned next to nothing in school about the Khmer Rouge, who in a little less than four years in power executed, tortured and starved to death an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, about a quarter of the population.

"I just heard from my parents that there was mass killing," Cheak said. "It's hard to believe." Her high school history teacher told her the basics -- the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 -- and advised her to read about the rest on her own, she recalled.

Nearly three decades after the Khmer Rouge were overthrown, a battle over history is underway in Cambodia. On one side are forces eager to reckon with the past, both in school and at a special court set up to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Many teachers, students and activist groups say more should be taught about the Khmer Rouge years, which is virtually absent from school curriculums now.

Blunting these demands is a government whose top leaders were once associated with the now-defunct communist movement and who seem loath to cede control over such a politically sensitive chapter of Cambodian history.

"Suppose that ever since 1945, Germany had been ruled by former Nazis," said Philip Short, author of "Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare," a biography of the Khmer Rouge leader published in 2004. "Would the history of the Nazi regime be taught honestly in Germany today? This is now Cambodia's problem."

A new high school textbook about the era, the first written by a Cambodian, was recently published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent institute in Phnom Penh that specializes in Khmer Rouge history. In "A History of Democratic Kampuchea," author Khamboly Dy, 26, spells out in 11 detailed chapters the rise, reign and fall of the Khmer Rouge, who called themselves the Communist Party of Kampuchea and the country, Democratic Kampuchea.

A Cambodian government review panel deemed the book unsuitable for use in the regular curriculum. Instead, the panel said the book could be used as supplementary reference material and as a basis for the Ministry of Education to write its own textbook.

"It's a start. The door is open," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center, which has been pushing to get a textbook into classrooms since 1999.

Short said Khamboly's text is hard to fault on substantive historical grounds. "It deserves to be not merely an approved textbook for Cambodian schools but a compulsory text, which all Cambodian schoolchildren should be required to study," he said.

Its sidelining reflects the failure of the country's current leaders to move beyond their Khmer Rouge past, he said. Prime Minister Hun Sen, National Assembly President Heng Samrin and Senate President Chea Sim were all middle-ranking Khmer Rouge officials, he said.

The three men left Cambodia for Vietnam in the late 1970s and returned with Vietnamese army forces that overthrew Pol Pot in 1979. Today, their political legitimacy rests in part on their credentials as men who helped free Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge tyranny.

Heng Samrin said it was unfair to implicate him and other top officials of the ruling Cambodian People's Party in the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.

In an interview with a Cambodian journalist, he maintained that the term "Khmer Rouge" refers only to people who joined the National United Front of Kampuchea, which in the first half of the 1970s fought the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government but later betrayed the revolution and killed innocent people.

He and his colleagues only fought to liberate Cambodia from Lon Nol and his imperialist henchmen, he said. "We were not involved in the Khmer Rouge regime," he said, adding that he had been only a "simple soldier."

Khamboly said that picking his way through politically charged points was the most difficult aspect of writing the book, which was printed with $10,000 from the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy. By citing sources, focusing on survivor stories and seeking neutral language, Khamboly said, he hoped to avoid political tussles.

It wasn't enough. The committee that reviewed the text criticized it for giving too much attention to the years after 1979, when Cambodian factions fought a long civil war, and for tracing the roots of the Khmer Rouge back to the struggle against French colonization and to Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist Party.

Committee members also said naming individuals associated with the Khmer Rouge government was "unnecessary" and a threat to their safety.

History "should be kept for at least 60 years before starting to discuss it," said committee member Sorn Samnang, president of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, a graduate school, according to the minutes of a Dec. 14 meeting of the review panel.

There is a long-standing political debate in Cambodia over whether Vietnam liberated or invaded the country when it ousted the Khmer Rouge.

Khamboly's book uses neither term, saying only that Vietnamese forces "fought their way into Cambodia."

"We use facts," Khamboly said. "Whether they invaded or liberated the country is an interpretation."

But in Cambodia, as in other post-conflict states, there are few facts that belong to everybody. In a Sept. 19 letter to Hun Sen, the premier, his education adviser, Sean Borat, generally praised the book but took issue with Khamboly's failure to characterize the Vietnamese action as a liberation.

He also objected to the book's characterization of Cambodians who returned with the Vietnamese in 1979 as "Khmer Rouge defectors." That phrase, Sean Borat wrote, must be deleted because "the Cambodian People's Party did not originate from Khmer Rouge soldiers but from a massive movement that emerged to oppose the brutal regime led by Pol Pot."

The offending phrase was removed from the final version of the book.

Young Cambodians haven't been formally taught much about the Khmer Rouge in school since propaganda texts of the 1980s, when Cambodia was ruled by the communist government that the Vietnamese installed. Those books depicted the Khmer Rouge with such graphic ferocity that some children grew up thinking they were actual monsters.

These books were taken out of use in 1991, when U.N.-brokered peace talks ended more than a decade of civil war and led to elections.

In 2002, a 12th-grade history textbook touching on the Pol Pot years was introduced but quickly recalled after controversy arose over the book's omission of the 1993 electoral victory of the royalist Funcinpec party. A new version of the text has yet to appear. Ministry of Education officials say they plan to publish a new book in 2009; they blame the delay on lack of funds.

In the meantime, Cambodia's youth are "a lost generation," said Chea Vannath, former president of the Center for Social Development, a local rights group. In the absence of a shared national story about the Khmer Rouge, a thousand conversations, fractured by politics, rumor, myth and the varieties of human experience are being passed down to a sometimes skeptical younger generation.

"When a kid doesn't eat all the rice on the plate, his mother tells him, 'If you were in the Pol Pot regime, you would die because you don't have enough food,' " said Nou Va, 27, a program officer at the Khmer Institute for Democracy, a nonprofit group that recently produced a documentary film about the generation gap. "The kid says, 'Oh, she's just saying that to blame us. I don't believe it.' "

The battle for history is also being waged at a former military headquarters on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where a special tribunal set up by the United Nations and the Cambodian government is struggling to bring to justice those leaders of the Khmer Rouge who survive. (Pol Pot died in 1998.)

Efforts to establish the court go back a decade. Despite recent signs of progress toward convening trials, many observers have concluded that the Cambodian government is not ready for a truly independent inquiry into this chapter of the nation's past.

"Were Hun Sen and his colleagues to permit an honest appraisal of the past, it would be the best proof that they have finally broken with that past and moved out from under the shadow of their Khmer Rouge origins," Short said. "Unfortunately, all the signs continue to point in the opposite direction."

Cheak, the medical student, has a more immediate concern. It's about Khamboly's new book. "Where," she asked, "can I get a copy?"

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