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Khmer Politics Alternatives Circle

~ Thinking outside the box about Cambodia

Khmer Politics Alternatives Circle

Monthly Archives: November 2014

Summits in November

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Culture, Event

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My dear Kacvey,

Did you have enough suits in your wardrobe for the protocol at Pochentong for the departures and returns of the Cambodian delegations to the “Summits” in China, Myanmar and Laos?

So many summits in one month and with superpowers: US, China, Russia … and so many galas, receptions, banquets …. and the silken dark purple jacket in Beijing!!! Ah! so much fun!

But, Kacvey, have you ever wondered:

– why the Cambodians have never heard the delegations uttering one word on those international podium or even seen a copy of the speech that Cambodia delivered at those meetings?

– what were Cambodia input/contributions in the negotiations in a myriad of issues towards the finalization of the draft of joint statements?

– would there had been any position papers submitted to the meetings and stating the positions of Cambodia in those issues? and

– why did the Cambodian press corps that accompanied the delegation keep so quiet on the above concerns?

If our ego was so high because we sat at the same conference table with Obama, Xi Jingping or Putin, what then Cambodia gets out of that? Goliath decides, David abides by?!

Epictetus once said that life is a theater. If so, life in the international arena is even a bigger theater. In a play, the cast has main actors and supernumeraries.

Kacvey, you are the judge!

Ooops! Forgot another “Summit”: “Cambodian Summit” on Friday 28/11 morning at the NA!

Well, better be a big fish in a small pond!

UPDATE: It looks like a promotion is on the way!

If this news is reliable

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2015-01/15/c_133921535.htm

the Cambodian strongman will be in Davos, Switzerland, on 21 January 2015 for the World Economic Forum. What the representative of Cambodia with a load of Doctor honoris causa in his briefcase is going to talk about in front of the world economists, businessmen and financiers? Pressmen, please have your video recorder ready!

How about a wreath of flowers around the neck to make the scenery more exotic?!

Hope the translator/interpreter does know his profession regardless of what he will be saying!

Black Friday

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Event, Politics

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My dear Kacvey,

Hope you did not burn your wallet at Psar Thméy!

On Friday 28 November 2014, while the world was going through a Black Friday shopping frenzy, the NA of Cambodia voted a US$3.8 billions budget for fiscal year 2015. One could reasonably wonder where Cambodia could gather that enormous mass of money to cover the state expenditures including those for the “ghosts workers”,  “the nephews” and “the commissions.” Does Cambodia now have oil wells? gold mines? Oh yes, we live off “foreign aids”!!!

Whereas the debate about the 2015 budget should  have been a biggest news of the day for the country, the focus was however switched to the side meeting between the 2 “bosses” with the view to iron out the muddy issue of the “nec” (see previous post: “Pain in the nec”) that has been lingering among the subordinates who could not understand what did the bosses really want since 22 July.

Well, Kacvey, nothing moves in Cambodia without the green light from the higher-up. “Srok Khmer” is not a Srok for Khmers, but rather “Srok agn!”

What was the big outcome then: setting a new deadline at end of February 2015! When was the previous deadline? Big deal!

A bigger outcome that pleased the media was the newly coined words, à l’Américaine: “Minority Leader”! “Equal in rank to the prime minister”!

What a vanity!

In Cambodia, life is imitation. Once, it was “Shadow Cabinet” à la Westminster, now “Minority Leader” à la US Congress. But someone seems to forget that the US President cannot enter the Congress chambers, except for addressing the State of the Union. Not in Cambodia!

Kacvey, if aping, aping well!

Another so-called big outcome was the issue of “KCTM” (see previous post “KCTM” vs. “KCPB”). Kacvey, would you think that France, Canada or USA will just easily suspend the citizenship for the multinationality-Khmers at the snap of the fingers of Khmer leaders? Ah, when ignorance colocates drollery!

Let’s close this note on human characters. Pascal left a legacy with these words: “Tous les hommes se haissent naturellement l’autre. On s’est servi comme on a pu de la concupiscence pour la faire servir au bien public. Mais ce n’est que feindre et une fausse image de la charité. Car au fond ce n’est que haine.” (Pensées, 243)

 

JS on BF 2014

Thanksgiving

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Culture, Event, Social

≈ 1 Comment

My dear Kacvey

On every second Monday of October, and on every fourth Thursday of November, Canadians and Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving. A statutory holiday has been established both in Canada and in the US to allow citizens to give thanks for the blessing of the harvest.

As you have quite a number of close Canadian and American friends, you certainly are on the list of the guests who are invited to celebrate the Thanksgiving in their home during this auspicious day of the year.

Enjoy the traditional turkey meal, and the football game on TV featuring the Detroit Lions! and do bear in mind these words by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

Let us pause here for a moment and reflect on the value of Thanksgiving with regards to Khmer, expatriates or otherwise. In Khmer Buddhist rites and customs, we also have days when we do prayers of thanks and pay gratitude to divinities, nature and ancestors: Chaul-Chégn Vassar, Bonn Pchoum Ben, Baing Skaul, Om Touk Sampéas Preah Khè, Ârk Ambok, Poun Phnom etc … The names differ, the spirit does not.

But here are some societal and down-to-earth questions that we all should deeply ponder not while eating but while the mind is at work:

– Whom does the poor or the dispossessed have to be thankful to?

– Whom does the one who lost his/her land and roof to land grabbers have to be thankful to?

– Whom do those who lost their forest habitat to foreign corporations have to be thankful to?

– When rivers and lakes are appropriated and controlled by foreigners, whom do local fishermen have to be thankful to?

– Whom do the unemployed and the laid-off have to be thankful to?

Be well, Kacvey!

=====

Update: Thanksgiving Day, Thursday 26 November 2015

To paraphrase Henri David Thoreau, we are grateful for what we are and have and our thanksgiving is perpetual.

But Victor Hugo went even further when he said: “To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and knows where it must go. Your prayer knows much about it than you do.”

Happy Thanksgiving, Kacvey!

The nephews – Part II

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Issue, Politics, Social

≈ Comments Off on The nephews – Part II

… autocracy that followed the end of the most tragic and genocidal KR regime at the very end of the 1970s. The country was like a company where the boss decides on everything from buying toilets papers to hiring who he wants. Checks and balances were unknown or didn’t exist, the legal system resembled the kangaroo court, and everybody was satisfied and threaded along.

To paraphrase William Pitt, a British Prime Minister in the 2nd half of the 18th century, nepotism is the off-spring of unlimited power that is apt to corrupt the mind of those who possess it.

Then came 1993 with some sort of democracy that lays parallelly with the existing autocracy. This gave birth to a compromise arrangement with a two-head leadership. Nepotism of the past became a highly prized example for the new party to copy and to put it into effect for its interests. Nepotism had then found the most fertile ground to breed and to grow. Each party stashed the administration with its minions regardless of competence, qualification, skill, educational background … the unwritten rule was that every position must be filled by 2 persons, one from each party. Parity obliges!

Within the society, it is even and often heard that: “if you do not know how to “si sam nauk”, it means you are not smart!” What type of society do people live in when good character and virtue are turned upside down and indicted by corrupted thinking and attitude! Furthermore the old Khmer phrase “si toach dôay toach, si thom dôay thom” remains 101% valid more now than ever!

In the words of George Bernard Shaw, democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Nepotism promotes new nepotism, and the process self-multiplies at exponential rate. Cambodia is then like a pizza pie owned by a patriarch who distributes each slice to each nephew at his own pleasure and with no question asked. Old-boy network, that is!

John Steinbeck, once said: Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts  … perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

So, Kacvey, you can then wonder how do we go from here to tame this monster called nepotism and its bedfellow called corruption?

In the latest report on world corruption, Transparency International studied the level of corruption in the public sectors in 175 countries, Cambodia …

To be continued to “The nephews – Part III”

The creature that loves felling the trees

22 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Culture, Event, Issue, Social

≈ Comments Off on The creature that loves felling the trees

My dear Kacvey,

Lately in Siem Reap, an invisible creature has roamed around the various temples looking for trees as preys for its hunger. First it identified the lone tree in Ta Prom, and now five more trees in Prey Rup.

This creature has been telling people, without providing reliable studies and surveys,  that these six centuries-age-old trees need to be felt as a sacrifice to its power and also because they damage the structures of Ta Prom and Prey Rup. Words and evidence are two completely different things like Ta Prom and Prey Rup!

Now, Kacvey, how could these trees do damage to the structures of the temples for all the hundreds of years that have passed? Natural force and time have combined the trees and the temples to become one, and no man has ever understood how this had happened. How could this creature not see that it is the thousands of people who trampled those structures on a daily basis are the cause of the damage? Look at the stones! They eroded and crumbled under the feet of these mortals.

It is not enough that mountains have already been shaved off trees to become “phnom kbaal trâ pék”, it warmly welcomes the chainsaws of the deforesters to the Angkor park. It won’t take long before the trees in the Angkor Thom compound will meet the same fate. The creature gets hungrier at every new dawn!

If in the future, after the trees are felt and the structures crumble, who would take the blame? Men die, Ta Prom and Prey Rup survive!

Blaming the trees to hide its incompetence and lack of skill to manage the flow of tourists is the name of the game! Irresponsibility and lack of accountability have no limit in Khmer management style!

In “The Aeneid” (III. 27-61), Virgil told the story when Aeneas, while in the Thracian Lands, tried to wrench the green growth from the ground to provide a leafy covering for an altar, he encountered a horrible and astounding miracle. When he pulled 3 bushes, dark blood came out of the bark and the roots that were broken off from the soil. Aeneas was then confronted with the human voice of Polydorus – who was killed by the Thracian king and buried on that spot – answering; “Why, Aeneas, must you rend a poor sufferer? I am buried here. Wound me no more, and do not stain your righteous hands with sin. I am no foreigner: I am Trojan-born. And when harm is done to this stalk it is human blood which flows. Ah, make haste to flee these coasts of avarice, this land of savagery! For I am Polydorus. Here death overpowered me in a crop of piercing iron-pointed spears. And so a crop resembling javelins has grown over me.”

With the para-Buddhist feelings about “nèak ta” or “khmôarch lôurng” in the back of the belief among the Khmer and “Khmer kaun chauv chèn”, could there still be similar or another kind of miracle in the 21st century in Cambodia’s Ta prom and Prey Rup?

Dear Kacvey, please try asap to secure a few photos of those trees for posterity sake! … or it may be already too late when you read this letter. Alas!

UPDATE – 7 more trees have now been slated for destruction.

http://m.thmeythmey.com/?page=detail&ctype=article&id=22405&lg=kh&#detail_block_read

Margaret Mead, once, said: “We will not have a society if we destroy the environment.”

Angkôr krâ aup Rumduol

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Event, Social

≈ Comments Off on Angkôr krâ aup Rumduol

My dear Kacvey,

Hope you enjoy your meal with Angkôr Rumduol that has recently been recognized and voted as one of the best fragrant rice in the world, and for which a reward/medal/prize is awarded to the Khmer rice farmers community.

Warmest Congratulations to Khmer farmers!!!

And Bon appétit to you!

Speaking about food, here is food for thought: If Khmer farmers are able to produce a top quality rice and show the world their best ability, skill and hard work, why Khmer politicians cannot produce a top quality politics and governance for Cambodia? When are they going to stop looking down on those farmers, stop taking credit for things that are not theirs, and start respecting them as their equals? Saying nice things about and to them in their village only when comes elections time is pure hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.

“KCTM” vs. “KCPB”

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Issue, Politics, Social

≈ Comments Off on “KCTM” vs. “KCPB”

My dear Kacvey

The cacophony in Phnom Penh about Khmer Chéat Tè Muoy (KCTM) and/or Khmer Chéat Pi Béy (KCPB) must be about to break your ear drum as it is so loud but unfortunately devoid of scrupulous knowledge or refined intellect. The bigger a drum is, the more hollow is its interior emptiness, and the louder is the sounds it produces.

There would not be easy answers to your question how the issue will play out. In fact, some angles of the issue had already been touched upon in previous posts, i.e. “Independent Cambodia”, “A Khmer American in Massachusetts” and “Pain in the “nec””.

Fractions and partisanship are formed along the line of real Khmerness of mono-nationality and foreign passport holders. Both sides seem to advance any pell-mell arguments and justifications that only serve their own immediate interests. Some even shamelessly used foreign countries examples to defend their undefendable point of view. The gibberish and horse trading will go on at the expense of the millions of Khmers who are constitutionally eligible to vote.

Quite a number of KCPB are holding high and very high positions and status in the leadership of Cambodia, and the outcome of the 28 July 2013 elections had seated a number of KCPB as deputies to the national assembly.

If they cannot come up with a solution that serves Cambodia in the long range, in a real and true democracy, the sovereign and independent people of Cambodia should be directly consulted in such a big issue like this one. A referendum at national level would allow the millions of Khmers to express their wish and to tell the country what type of leaders they want.

You, Kacvey, certainly recall, as a matter of a historical reminiscence, your time in Paris in the late 1960s when General De Gaulle decided to consult the French with a constitutional referendum on 27 April 1969! The French said “NO” to him and he resigned from the presidency and proudly left Rue Faubourg St. Honoré for Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. That’s courage in politics!

Respect of democracy in Cambodia is the duty of both KCTM and KCPB.

 

Postscript.

Kacvey, you certainly have a few KCPB among your acquaintances in Phnom Penh. Please share this link with them as it is about the Mayor of London who happens to hold dual citizenship (UK and US) and his fiscal situation with the US IRS.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/20/boris-johnson-us-tax-bill

 

 

Pain in the “nec”

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Institution, Issue, Politics

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My dear Kacvey,

It seems that some people got a flu on 22 July 2014, and even up to today they continue to have the cold, to cough and to be affected by a “pain in the nec.” No appropriate and efficient medicine happens to be found to get rid of that pain despite the many rounds of diagnostics made by some of the 123 elected doctors.

Even these doctors are now questioning whether the 22 July diagnostics were the correct one: some say the diagnostics stand as is, some others argue that they do not conform with the spirit of the patient. Go figure! “Maladie imaginaire” de Molière!

One thing appears to be clear to outsiders: the doctors are all charlatans attempting to treat the pain of the “nec” according to their own witchcraft textbooks and believing that the “nec” is theirs, and not of the patient.

The sickness has so far been so trivialized that the doctors assigned to handle it have lost the momentum to a point that they can’t even agree to pinpoint which one is the “9th” bone that is supposed to jointly articulate with the 8 others.

How about giving the “nec” a temporary nickname, such as: “no electoral commission”!

Later on, the 2 super-doctors held a symposium and decided that they would come up with a definite diagnostic that everybody would agree to by the end of February 2015. Meantime the “nec” is still suffering from the pain.

It seems also that these doctors are under the influence of ambition of multi-tasking; they have not even come up with the remedies for the “pain in the nec”, yet they are wasting their time to bargain for the expansion of the number of doctors in the on-and-off functioning hospital from 123 to 138 or 139.

As Publius Syrius long, long time ago said: “To do 2 things at once is to do neither.”

A lady and two men

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Book, Politics, Social

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My dear Kacvey

If the English version of the book “Song for an approaching storm – a fantasy” by Peter Froberg Idling was published before the July 2013 elections, Khmer voters who might have read it might also have had more food for thought before casting their votes. Well, regrets will not add any value to positive and forward thinking!

If you decided to pick up the book to satisfy your intellectual thirst, you certainly will find it truly interesting in so far as it concerned:

– a lady and two men,

– all of them are Khmer, with the same first name initial “S”,

– actions and intrigues that occurred during the elections in September 1955, and

– the role of a  fourth and very important person also with the initial “S”.

All are part of Cambodia contemporary history.

Enough revelations! Otherwise you will find it less captivating.

 

Postscript:

ISBN: 978-1-78227-0126

Publisher: Pushkin Press. London

 

 

First snow

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by KhmerPAC in Event, Social

≈ Comments Off on First snow

My dear Kacvey,

First snow has fallen on Sunday,

Everything was covered white, but the sky is grey.

Once a year, the season changes,

It’s the law of nature, not commanded by mortal man.

It’s cold, the pond frozen, the road slippery

Warm clothes and heated houses are the season necessities.

Khmer overseas go through this rituals every year,

But their mind get stuck in the mud about Cambodia.

They live through the changes the whole world has known,

But their Khmer thinking remain like a thousand-year stone.

Kacvey, please tell your neighbors it is the time to wake up,

To catch the changes that are fast growing up.

The age of iPhone allows people to connect,

Make the best of it to develop a different Khmer mindset.

FullSizeRender (2)

 

 

 

 

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