My dear Kacvey,
So, what did the citizens get out of the week ending Friday 18, 2016 with all the raucous and inharmonious brouhaha in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk?
A quick recap of the news: The week started with the story of the tape of the ex-1st-vice-of-the-NA, the Manila summit of the opposition and then the re-shuffling of the deck of cards of cabinet members by the dealer who shuffles others but never himself.
What did the tape reveal? State secrets, nuclear bomb plant maps, plans of military invasions …? Do the contents of the tape serve the real people who are supposed to be served by the person involved in the tape, or they only serve to feed the gossip columns of the social media or otherwise? Why don’t people just let what is in the social media be in the social media? Why other people have to echo what is in the social media and why not the social media be news maker by itself and through its own merits? Then, one cannot ignore the assumption that there has to be other organized motives by the leakers? If the people who demonstrated in the public place and in front of the residence cannot break him, the dirty spying method must be put to use to test that resistance. The old cliché “walls have ears” has now been complemented by the new one: “cell phones have eyes”! The bottom line is if a personal character is not up to the standard of a representative of the people in the assembly, it is up to the people to exercise their freedom not to vote for her/him again if his/her name is on future ballots. Politics is dirty, but for the sake of the moral welfare of the society, constituency must reject dirty politicians.
From Manila, it was not the embargo of the information, but it seemed that, because “walls have ears”, the best approach would be just to keep “quiet”: quiet about the tape, quiet about politics, quiet about governing and government (reshuffling or not!), even quite quiet about various draft laws to be soon adopted, quiet about everything, as if being quiet would solve every question or issue that has unquietly arisen or hung on or over as a sword of Damocles. Kacvey, you have then to wait until 26 March 2016 to be able to detect some whispers or sounds when the party “delegates” (physically minus at least one from France!) commence the convention. But, Kacvey, what does an opposition party in the NA serve, if it is there just to be “quiet?” Did the electorate send them to the NA just to keep their idea frozen and their mouth shut? The price paid by the electorate is extremely high, or is silence really worth a ton of gold? Remember the old saying “silence is golden” or the song written by Bob Gaudio of “The Four Seasons!”
Then in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk, there was the news of the musical chairs in the cacophony orchestra of the ruling party. They built the hype and the spinners spun to such a level as if the reshuffling of the cabinet was going to be an earth-shaking event that would stunt the world. Well, it turned out that the planet earth is still round and the autocracy the order of the day(s)! It was the same old deck of dirty cards that they shuffled and re-shuffled; the shuffler is the same one during the last 35 years; the rated-F ministers moved to the not-rated-F-ministries; others changed from one portfolio to another to give an appearance of change. One big question could be openly asked: who then shuffles the shuffler? Are the shuffled born to be eternal indentured servants of the shuffler?
So, Kacvey, what all the above have to do with the real people whose political concern and interest is only their right to vote and to cast the ballot when elections time comes, either 2017 or 2018 or any other year? What do the real people learn from the above? Well, let make simple answers to difficult questions: The real people already know that what the above politicians think and do are only for their own personal benefit and glory; they plan and organize everything for themselves and for their own future; the chefs cook only for themselves; they take the real people for granted and they think that they can fool the real people again and again.
If this is what they think and concoct, honest and hard-working citizenry, let fire the 1st salvo of warnings to corrupted, self-serving and incompetent politicians: at the next elections, and whatever elections it will be, DO NOT BEG THEM TO REPRESENT YOU, but rather:
– let them be beggars for your political conscientiousness;
– let them panhandle you for your genuinely honest and sincere vote;
– let them beg for your free and constitutional right to vote;
– let them be beggars of your right to choose according to your conscience and knowledge;
– let them be beggars of your demand that they be elected to serve the real people, and not themselves.
When the chefs cook only for themselves: A Comment…
I see the eloquence in your writing. I have just one question. How do we stop the shuffling? The people are hopeful. How do we capitalize on that?
The people, for the very first time, are very hopeful. They are led to believe that the Rescue Party will win and bring substantive resource with them. They are hopeful that the country will have a chance to start life. I mean a Country that is a living and breathing organism, metaphorically of course. At this time Cambodia is lifeless. The people are suffocating under the ruling class that doesn’t have the first clue of what it is to have “life” to rule, to keep alive and flourishing.
If the people are to have this living and breathing Cambodia the first focus must be on finding and gathering the catalysts to ignite this metaphorical life. I think the catalysts, in this case, are the under brook principles that all the ruling class must have: honesty, service and transparency. They must be overwhelming reflected in all aspects of the government. And to keep the Country alive and flourishing they do the following: uphold the laws, create markets for the country’s commerce, create and maintaining good roads to move around the commerce, freedom of the press, world class school system and a fair tax system that encourages growth of the economy and that encourages hope in all classes in the society.
Who ever are the ruling class. If they don’t care to form some kind of a framework to sustain some type of system to support a living (as opposed to surviving) of the population in Cambodia, the country will implode and die, metaphorically. Nothing will be able to function in the country and eventually will cease to exist.
If we, Cambodians, don’t have the courage to find the solution to govern ourselves and depending on the superpowers to fix it for us. …We will be “fixed” for sure. What’s hopeful right now is that the atmosphere in the global politics is still loose enough that they won’t interfere in our affair, yet…
But if we can’t get it together soon, those who are the power will suddenly find themselves dealt out of power and their fate will forever hang in the balance. Cambodia will never have a say on her own behalf anymore. It will take an act of “God” for Cambodia to direct her own fate again. And eventually, Khmer will be no more… Khmer as people will be dispersed and Khmer as the country will be absorbed by her neighbors.
So, wake up and start to take stock in yourselves!!!