“Pressurise businesspeople to help is not a good measure to ease economic problems because those businesspeople, once they have spent their fortunes, would want to recover them back through corrupt favours. A cycle of corruption would ensue, causing a vicious cycle and a catch-22 situation.”
Editorial by Khmerization: - War! This a message from Mr. Hun Sen, if he loses the election. Mr Hun Sen sounded a little bit desperate when he made a speech to a forum of businesspeople recently in Phnom Penh appealing for their supports. The PM seemed to invoke fears among businesspeople and voters that if he loses the election there will be war. Point blank, he is sending a message to those businesspeople, the oppositions, the voters and the international community that he will wage a war if he loses the election (read his speech here).
Facing with economic woes, wage pressures from public servants and high inflation which surely will cause voters’ back clash, Mr. Hun Sen has been cornered and pelted from every direction. As history has shown in the past, when cornered, he has never been hesitant in using force to gain the upper hand.
While I welcome his appeal for help from the businesspeople, I do sense that his appeal is invoked with vitriolic, pressures and fears, both to those businesspeople and the voters. His appeal seemed not aimed at asking the businesspeople to assist the economy in general, but it was rather aimed at helping him and his Cambodian People’s Party to win the upcoming election. Pressurise businesspeople to help is not a good measure to ease economic problems because those businesspeople, once they have spent their fortunes, would want to recover them back through corrupt favours. A cycle of corruption would ensue, causing a vicious cycle and a catch-22 situation.
Mr Hun Sen’s supporters might think that what I am writing here is full of diatribes and rhetoric. But they have to agree with me that, with the Khmer Rouge being neutralised and incapacitated, the leader of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters being jailed in a foreign land and the oppositions having no army, who will wage a war, but Mr. Hun Sen himself.
With such a fiery speech coming out of Mr. Hun Sen’s mouth, whose recalcitrance and obstinacy is well known, one would conclude that his speech is a clear indication yet that, no matter what, win or lose, he will probably employ a Mugabe-style of clinging to power. I hope my prediction is wrong. //
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