My dear Kacvey,

Oh, boy! What an end of the Chaul Chnam 1st month: the drought, the tape and the accusation, the charge against and the detention of human rights workers for complicity in a half a grand so-called bribery! And even phantasmagoric: the so-called and self-appointed upholder of the law worked days and nights and also on a Sunday!

The legal and judiciary chaos and imbroglio are so messy that the constitution and the laws are shut out by big mouths who mixed up everything on the planet in order to shamelessly, subjectively and irrationally justify the autocratic rule.

When honest citizens can be accused and detained on flimsy or trumped charges without proper and independent investigation, and when they see that their natural and institutional rights are repeatedly violated to the core, they lose all hope for a just society that they have been nurturing. There are limited means available to them to counter this abuse because the legal system, the police, the justice process through Prey Sâr are all in the hand of the corruption and autocracy.

But despite their self-defenselessness, they always keep their head up and clear; instead, they feel:
– a sense of panic in the ruling party machinery and machination;
– a sense of fear of loss of control, the control that the ruling party has instilled over the society but has now increasingly crept out of its grip, and
– a sense of loss of perspective and reason like the boat, in the middle of the sea, sailed by the ruling party is facing Poseidon’s ire with strong wind blown from and across all 4 cardinal directions.

Kacvey, whichever way one goes, it is the Cambodian people who has been cheated and pay the price for nothing that they have done wrong. Cheat is a culture of dishonesty that is the source of corruption and other social sicknesses. Cheater must not be given respect and honor, but rather be abandoned to his egoism and self-deprecation. However,

• Even if love is a game in which one cheats, why the human rights workers have to pay a heavy price on behalf of the cheater?
• Even if a man cheats his own family, why other innocent families have to suffer on his behalf?
• Even if a man cheats for the sake of beauty, why does the authority go into his bedroom and implicate other people whose crime was just to do their jobs professionally and according to the normal standard of responsibility?
• Even if a man cheats his matrimonial mattress, what that has to do with his public life and who has the moral authority to judge his bedroom character?
• Even if a man cheats one beauty for another, since when enjoying the company of a beauty is considered an act of sexual terrorism?
• Even if a man cheats for the sake of his macho ego, why not leaving the whole issue to his family?
• Even if a man cheats one lover for another, where does it say that lovers are considered financial assets that have to be declared and reported to the authority?
• Even if a man cheats for his endless carnal needs, why politicizing his carnality for political benefit, and why not leave him in the hands of his personal physician or therapist?
• Even if a man cheats because he has a low moral standard, why not letting him cheat on himself and face his own music?
• Even if a man cheats his davenport, who can say that the other man doesn’t?
• Even if a man cheats himself, why not letting him bear his own consequences alone?

It all comes down to the issue of “truth” and “honesty.” No matter what people try to hide or to cover up the truth, as time goes by, what is true is revealed and what is fake fades away. Time finds the truth. Every public person must be honest as he has a moral obligation to honor the honest hearts that cast the votes for him. Same as in truth, time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies, as history has no place for them.

Cheating must not be rationalized. When the truth is cheated, sooner or later the Pandora’s box will open for all the evils of the world to fly out.

Scott Alexander, an American author, said: “All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”