Cambodia at the Crossroads
The recent amendments to the Cambodian Constitution, which reduced the majority required for a confidence motion for the government in the National Assembly, resulted in a concentration of the Prime Minister’s power that has no precedent since the formation of the Royal Government of Cambodia thirteen years ago. Hun Sen, holding the post from 1985, under the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, had been forced to compromise with the Royalists (Funcinpec) soon after the 1993 legislative elections, and shared the power with them in three successive governments. Clan fights and conflicting interests slowed down the country’s development when they did not degenerate into violent clashes. As the CPP no longer needed the Funcinpec, several scores of its ministers, State Secretaries and governors were politely dismissed in the last weeks, following their leader Prince Ranariddh, President of the Royalist party, after he resigned from the Presidency of the Lower House.
The new era launched by the 1991 Paris Accords seems to be a thing of the past. All the parties had gathered around the same table with a spirit of agreement that would be incarnated, without the Khmer Rouge, in the first Royal government, in 1993. Norodom Sihanouk had then succeeded in imposing a coalition government, at the risk of forcing the unnatural union of his son Norodom Ranariddh ‘s Funcinpec and Hun Sen’s CPP, with the two men becoming co-Prime Ministers. Since each ministerial post was doubled, every decision was held up by the negotiations that preceded it.
Paralyzed by its frictions and contradictions, this strange two-headed body exploded into violence in July 1997. The battles ended in the neutralization of Funcinpec’s military means and the exile of its leaders. Thanks to the international community’s insistence on a compromise, these leaders were, however, able to come back to Cambodia in 1998 and take part in the second round of legislative elections that gave birth to… the same governmental platform (but this time with only one Prime Minister, since Prince Ranariddh accepted the Presidency of the Assembly).
The 1993 Constitution imposed the rule that any new government should obtain a confidence vote of at least two-thirds of the MPs and this continued to weaken election results until those of 2003. As the CPP had won « only » 73 of the 123 Assembly seats, it had to seek an alliance once more with its former partner. Even then, they took eleven months to find a consensus solution – a government of a plethora of 332 members, unequalled in the world– which once again favored factionalism, prevarication and inertia.
On 2 March last, 96 of the 97 MPs present adopted the amendments to the Constitution which allowed the Assembly to show its confidence in the government through a simple majority. On leaving the House, Sam Rainsy, MP and leader of the opposition, who emerged from the 2003 elections as the second strongest Cambodian political force, expressed his hope that in the next legislative elections in 2008, « a single party would be at the helm, thus avoiding the creation of useless government posts and the resulting corruption*1».
In December 2004, the seventh meeting of the group of sponsors (Consultive Group, CG) had opened with the two subjects of good governance and poverty reduction. An aid of around 504 million dollars had been promised against the acceleration of various reforms, especially those concerning the legal machinery, administration, the fight against corruption, and public finance management. A month earlier, the World Bank (WB) had published a report in which it expressed its worry that corruption is « endemic and high *2» . The document also called into question the evaluation and the work protocols of the sponsors, estimating that the lack of seriousness of certain amongst them had led to waste and misappropriation of funds. The Economic Institute of Cambodia even feels that Cambodian public institutions are believed to affect negatively the process of development*3».
A year later, the Press note published after the eighth CG, repeated like a litany, but tactfully, that Cambodia needs to act now to consolidate the progress it has made to date and accelerate its reform efforts in order to address remaining challenges. The list that followed included the anti-corruption Bill (but its text, still in the discussion phase, seemed still far from international standards), infrastructure development or improvement in public services.
In fact, the sponsors were impatient with the government’s results that they judged too slow and too weak, seeing that the CG had paid out almost seven billion dollars from 1992. Admittedly – and it was no mean task –, Hun Sen succeeded in bringing peace back to the country by dismantling the Khmer Rouge guerilla from 1996 to 1999. But fifteen years after the intervention of the blue helmets, it must be noted that the « wild » capitalism in which Cambodia got resolutely involved did not benefit the majority.
In 2005, the economy saw a growth of around 7%. The garment industry exported 2.2 billion worth of products last year, that is, 10.6% more than in 2004, belying the fear that it would lose many contracts with the multi-fibre accord ending on 1st January 2005. That year, the Chinese, leading investors in the kingdom, already anticipated the customs barriers that the Europeans and Americans would no doubt impose on imports from the People’s Republic of China by consolidating their production facilities in Cambodia. Today, the garment industry remains the leading employer with more than 280,000 workers. Tourism is also developing rapidly. The number of people using the Siem Reap international airport has multiplied 50 times from 1998 to 2005. The Tourism Ministry has registered 1.4 million foreign visitors in 2005, that is a 35 % increase from the previous year. However healthy these two sectors, they cannot hide poverty ; they cannot even absorb the majority of the 200,000 young people who enter the job market every year. In fact, Cambodia still belongs to the LAN (Least Advanced Nations) and a large part of the population lives outside of development. The poverty level is stagnating at a critical level (around 35 % of the population) and 36 % of Cambodians are suffering from hunger.
In the rural areas where live 75% of the population, life is still very hard. Because of the population explosion in the 1980’s, despite the de-mining and clearing of many wooded zones, parcels of land are scarce and there simply isn’t enough for all. Further, since the late 1990s, many city-dwellers who have become wealthy in cities prefer to speculate in real estate rather than invest in businesses that are legally taxed by the State and illegally by corruption. Those who can afford this type of speculation obviously acquire the best lots, causing the peasants to go further away, far from the markets where they could sell their surplus… if they have any.
For in addition to poor infrastructure, the countryside suffers cruelly from the poor soil and very bad water resources, as the waterworks were destroyed by American bombings during the 1970s, never repaired by the State, rarely maintained by local bodies. Basically, agriculture is still of the subsistence kind, and families are insecure, at the mercy of climatic disasters or a disease that could ruin them.
They don’t have the means either to invest in diversification of their production (this essentially agricultural country is incapable of producing fruits and vegetables needed for internal consumption, and so import them, especially from Vietnam), or in new agrarian technologies, because they don’t have the means or are afraid of being robbed of their land once it is put to use. After the Khmer Rouge regime, land registers were erased. From 1989, once private property was re-established, most farmers did not know how to register their land properly, and cases of land-grabbing are numerous. The new National Authority for settling land disputes (ANRLF), which held its first meeting on 10 April last, has officially listed around 3,000 cases to be settled at the national level… Power has to be displayed. So it makes itself feared and functions dishonestly without impunity. The weakening of the State’s role and community relations from the early 1990s has led to a « brutalization » of society in which inequality abounds.
Corruption, cronyism and violence are ills that are neither new nor specific to Cambodia (Thailand and the Philippines come to our minds) where they had already fed the revolt in the 1960s. But since the intervention of the United Nations Temporary Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), the generosity of international assistance is so high that it has provoked a veritable gold rush. Factions, protected by their militia, drain it regularly to strengthen their powers and their alliances *4 ; individuals have exploited it to rush into the breach. What we then saw was inflationist bids for important posts, of the kind that could be turned to profit by renting out one’s fee rights. Today, the administration is affected at all levels and in unequalled proportions.
The State is considerably weakened, spoilt by men who run it, sometimes to its detriment, but who seem worried about their future, as if they fear that what they succeeded in grabbing today will be taken away from them tomorrow. How else can one explain the voracious and predatory appetite, the urgency with which certain leaders sell off cheaply or usurp public wealth as essential as a university, a ministry or a hospital?
Now that there are much fewer of them in business, the members of Funcinpec will find it more difficult to take advantage of the largesse of the big sponsors or dig into national resources. It remains to be seen if Hun Sen will use it to good to restore order in its ranks, significantly reduce embezzlements and accelerate the race to development. He is obviously aware that in land-stealing cases, to cite only this one instance, the guilty parties are often men belonging to his own party, and this could do him harm during the next elections. But in the same way that we can hope for the best, we can also fear the worst: the departure of the Royalists could also whet the appetite of those who have remained in power and deepen the rift between the CPP clans. And if Hun Sen feels he is in danger, he could be tempted to maintain order by resorting to force.
In any case, the international community is being very understanding as far as he is concerned, no doubt because Hun Sen was considered their only possible interlocutor. Declaring their satisfaction at the strong economic growth in 2005, the fund providers decided in March to renew their confidence in the Royal Government by promising it a total purse of 601 million dollars. Perhaps somewhat troubled by scruples – after leaving Cambodia high and dry during the genocide, then giving to the Khmer Rouge its UN seat till 1991 –, no doubt also because of interest – nobody wants an unstable country in the heart of ASEAN, between Thailand and Vietnam, two of the main driving forces of regional growth –, and certainly also because they would not want a failure, after all they have invested, the sponsors continue to pay out of their pockets.
It is also true that in a context where China and America are sounding out and measuring up each other, Cambodia is interesting because of its geostrategic position and because, paradoxically, everything is possible there if you have the money: the Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill inaugurated on 17 January one of the most imposing US Embassies in Asia, expressing his happiness on the deepening diplomatic relations between the two countries. Was this construction planned even while the rumor was going around that Washington was negotiating with Phnom Penh the installation of a military base in the South? Be that as it may, Beijing does not seem resigned to immobility: on the occasion of his official visit, on 10 April last, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced, for this year, the grant of aid of around 300 million dollars to the Kingdom, half of what was promised by the CG to which China does not belong. In 2004, Chinese investment projects approved by the Council for the Development of Cambodia were worth more than 450 million dollars, accounting for more than 57% of the total foreign projects. Beijing clearly wishes to be a dominating regional player, capable of containing American and Japanese influences*5, and in the same élan, force itself a corner in the heart of ASEAN, without however demanding in return for its generosity any legal reforms or efforts for transparency of power.
The recent discovery, in the Cambodian waters of the Gulf of Thailand, of oil deposits with reserves estimated at 500 million barrels of crude and deposits of natural gas that could go up to a hundred billion cubic meters, could generate an annual profit of two billion dollars from 2009. A stroke of luck for the Kingdom? The race for energy between the US and China could find a new track here. The international context of the 1970s had drawn Cambodia into civil war. Thirty-five years later, is the country managing foreign interference in a better way?
Just as international and humanitarian bodies took over a power that would never have been given to them elsewhere in Southeast Asia, will the setting up of the genocide tribunal be another lesson in paternalism or a way of cleansing one’s conscience? It is not sure that the average Cambodian really understands why the West and the United Nations are so keen on judging men whose guilt is so obvious to everybody. This could no doubt make sense if this were the opportunity for Cambodian society to accomplish, as exhorted by the film-maker Rithy Panh, a veritable work of awareness of the past (the Pol Pot regime does not find a place in school text-books) that would allow speech to be freed. But is rendering justice to the victims the main purpose of the exercise? As Philip Short writes, « To officials like Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s Secretary of State, who launched the American effort to bring the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders (supported by Washington in the 1980S) to trial, their condemnation for genocide, the most heinous of crimes, would allow the US to turn the page with honor and regain the moral high ground *6[supported by Washington in the 1980s] » A mere handful of old people would be actually judged and only for their actions during the period 1975-1979. Isn’t Cambodia only a pretext?
Today, the country teaches as many lessons on the consequences of thirty years of civil war on a society, as on the inconsequence, the inconsistency and the indolence of the international community. However, these issues are relatively not much analyzed.
In the on-line catalogue of the University documentation System (SUDOC), the key word « Cambodia » yields about thousand references in French, of which certain date back to the 19th century. If you take the trouble to scroll down the whole list, you will see that the country has given rise to all kinds of publications, from the most learned studies on religion, the colonial period, medicine or plants, to the most fanciful novels. But two topics have particularly inspired the authors: the Khmer Rouge and Angkor.
The first works of finding and maintaining the ancient capital, the first deciphering of the inscriptions in ancient Khmer, then the huge reconstruction works through anastylosis, which are being continued even now, especially the Bapuhon giant puzzle, were undertaken under the guidance of archaeologists and architects of l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, established a century ago at Siem Reap. Returned to the Cambodians by their French colonizers who had taken it back from Siam, Angkor has become an emblem. Since independence, in 1953, the monument was placed on all the national flags, including that of Pol Pot’s iconoclast Democratic Kampuchea, as if to reaffirm the power of founding myths and of the « glorious building ancestors », as if to proudly keep at bay this frustration that even today remains the most shared sentiment in the country.
Decolonization caused French orientalism to lose its base in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Cambodia’s closing, in 1975, deprived researchers of their ground for at least a decade. The successive disappearance of several scientific institutions, such as the CEDRASEMI in the late 1970s, the CHEAM then the CACSPI in the 1990s, followed by budget restrictions that have been affecting social sciences for some years now: all these factors have contributed to fragment and outcast research on the country. The prospects of improvement seem dim, since research laboratories and institutions are more and more captured by China. Jacques Népote has just left us suddenly, leaving unfinished several studies he had launched with his usual dynamism. We are not even quite sure that his post in the CNRS will be given to a young specialist on Cambodia. Yet there is still so much to understand and clarify…
*Grégoire Rochigneux is Assistant Director of IRASEC (Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asian) in Bangkok. He has particularly authored a book on Cambodian society [Grégoire Rochigneux (éd.), Cambodge soir, chroniques sociales d’un pays au quotidien, Aux lieux d’être-Irasec, Paris-Bangkok, with Preface by Olivier de Bernon, coll. Documents, 2005, 218 p.]. He will also contribute to the book Cambodge contemporain, under the guidance of Alain Forest, which will appear at the end of the year in the « Editions des Indes savantes ».
Founded at Phnom Penh in 1995 with the support of 'la Francophonie', *Cambodge soir is the last francophone periodical of South-East Asia. It is also one of the Kingdom's most respected information mediums, for the reliability of its information. The team of writers, made up of Cambodians and French members, work without compromise, to provide an unsurpassed freedom of tone to the region. You can subscribe to the electronic edition of the newspaper by emailing Pierre Gillette, editor in chief, at the following address:
cambodgesoirpnh@online.com.kh
*1: Leang Delux, 'The absolute majority for the vote of confidence adopted by the Assembly.' (La majorité absolue pour le vote de confiance adoptée par l’Assemblée), in Cambodge soir, 3-4-5 march 2006.
*2: World Bank, Cambodia at the Crossroads – Strengthening Accountability to Reduce Poverty, Phnom Penh, 15 november 2004, p. 3.
*3 Economic Institute of Cambodia, september 2005, p. 41.
*4 For more on this subject, see Grégory Mikaelian, 'For a re-reading of the cambodian political game: the case of reconstructed Cambodia( 1993-2005)' (Pour une relecture du jeu politique cambodgien : le cas du Cambodge de la reconstruction (1993-2005)), in Alain Forest (éd.), Cambodge contemporain, Irasec-Les Indes Savantes, Paris, à paraître, 25 p.
*5 : For more about this subject, see the commentaries of the Japanese embassador to Cambodia in Soren Seelow, 'Inauguration of the Institute of International Relations: Cross-reflections on the new world order and the emergence of Chinese power.' (Inauguration de l’Institut des relations internationales. Réflexions croisées sur le nouvel ordre mondial et l’émergence de la puissance chinoise), in Cambodge soir, 20 avril 2006 : 'What is greatly hoping for, is that the transparence of Chinese assistance. Currently, we don't clearly know the projects or the programs that China puts in place in this country, nor its political objectives.' (Ce que le Japon espère fortement, c’est la transparence de l’assistance chinoise. Actuellement, nous ne connaissons pas clairement les projets et les programmes que la Chine met en place dans ce pays, pas plus que ses objectifs politiques).
*6 Philip Short, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, John Murray, London, 2004, p. 447. |
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