A Change of Guard

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Thursday 7 March 2013

Hun Sen’s regime: The best of the worst

Do not compare Cambodia to Israel, Germany, Japan or Korea.....

By Anonymous

In Israel, in Germany, in Japan or in Korea... there were no killings of people who happened to wear glasses or had some education during the war. But Cambodia under KR alone, we experienced this tragedy. Please do not lessen KR crime in destroying the country, especially the human resources! Cambodia's economic development is not just Hun Sen’s job alone! All Khmers in Cambodia and the Cambodian Diaspora are all responsible for the country’s progress. Besides, how much money Israel, Japan, South Korea or Taiwan got annually from the US after WWII and how much rich Jewish communities outside Israel contributed to their country intellectually and economically? Please do not think that Khmers are not good because we are not as brilliant as Jews, or Japanese or Americans or Germans? I should ask myself what I did or I did not do to help my country so far?
5 March 2013 1:22am
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Hun Sen’s regime: The second worst regime of the world

By Khmerization
I would like to thank 1:22am for engaging in a sensible debate regarding the merit, or the lack of it, of Mr. Hun Sen’s rule in comparison to other regimes around the world.
I would now like to respond to a few points raised by you.
Israel, Germany, Japan or Korea have excelled in all fields in less than 20 years after emerging from the destruction of wars not because there were no killings of their people, but because these countries have leaders who were smart and patriotic and who loved their countries to death. Can we say the same about the leaders of Cambodia today?
In fact, 6 million Jews were murdered by Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II and Israel was created from scratch by the survivors of the holocaust. The rest of the survivors, who chose not to return to Israel, were scattered around the world.
In Germany, more than a million Germans were killed during the bombings and invasion of the Allied forces at the dying days of World War II. In Japan no less than 500,000 Japanese died during World War II and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Korea, no less than a million were killed or died during the Korean War that ended in 1953. In China, no less than 20 million Chinese were killed during the Chinese revolution and the fighting between Mao Zedong’s and Chiang Kai-shek’s forces that ended in 1949, and the destruction of infrastructure was immeasurable, yet China has emerged as a third super-power after America and the Soviet Union in less than 20 years. Now, China is the world’s second biggest economy and will overtake America as the number spot in less than 15 years time.
As far as the history goes, not much money was pumped into Japan or Israel, South Korea or Taiwan. In fact, because Japan and Germany were the losers of World War II, therefore there were demands for war reparations to the victors.
In Europe, there was the Marshall Plan, in which a substantial sum of money was pumped in, but at the end of the day it was the leaders of those countries who had made their countries prosperous and politically stable.
What about Cambodia? Cambodia was at the mercy of the international community in 1991 when the UN sent 20,000 troops and administrators and more than 2 billion dollars to help revive the peace process and, ultimately, the economy of Cambodia. After the UN left in 1993, around $1.5 billion dollars from the donor countries was pumped in every year to help revive the infrastructure, the economy, the democratic process, the judiciary and healthcare, but 20 years on Cambodia is still pretty poor and the population still suffered human rights abuses and the democratic process is going backward instead of going forward.
I do not believe that the reason Cambodia is a poor country today is because we Khmers are not “brilliant” as the Jews, the Japanese, the Germans or the Americans. On the contrary, we have Angkor Wat and the Khmer Empire to prove to the world that we are smart and brilliant. The fact that we are poor today is because we always have leaders who are not brilliant or who are selfish, and Mr. Hun Sen is one of many examples.
You have raised the point that the rich and educated Jews around the world have returned and helped revitalise Israel’s economy and its reconstruction. Can we say the same with the Cambodian Diaspora? The answer is no because Hun Sen did not welcome them.
There are estimated 1.7 million Cambodians living in the West and millions more are working in neighbouring and sympathetic countries. The Cambodians in the West have sent approximately $500 million dollars per year to help resuscitate the Cambodian economy. The Cambodian overseas workers would have sent millions also.
I am in total support of you when you said “Cambodia[‘s] economic development is not just Hun Sen’s job alone! All Khmers in Cambodia and the Cambodian Diaspora are all responsible for the country’s progress”. I would like Mr. Hun Sen to think the same as you and allowed all educated Khmers to contribute without fearing of retributions, harassment or imprisonment. But the fact is he wanted to hold leadership and political monopoly.
In fact, many educated Khmers, some even with Ph.Ds, have returned to help Cambodia, but they were either harassed, chased back to the West or were jailed because they have tried to right his wrongs. If only Hun Sen accepted them or allowed them to utilise their skills to their full potential without fears and intimidation like in their adopted countries, their contributions would have helped Cambodia significantly and made a huge difference to the Khmer society. Today, Cambodia is run by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge leaders who did not even finish primary school and some of them cannot even read or write. One wonders why Cambodia is not going forward.
It is regrettable that Mr. Hun Sen always likes to compare his regime to the Khmer Rouge regime, which was the worst regime in the world. In this sense, Mr. Hun Sen is trying to tell the world that his regime is the second worst regime in the world, that is to say it is the best of the worst.
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Pol Pot is not the only cause of Cambodia's economic woes
Anonymous said... 
Dear Brother or sister,

The big problem of economy deadlock of Cambodia is due to the bad image of our Cambodian leaders and especially our routine corruption behaviors.

I used to think like some of you guys that Pol Pot regimes killed all or destroyed our Human Resources. It's true in some points. However, as a neutral person, I don't think that Pol Pot Regime is the only cause of our slow economy development.

Besides Pol Pot Regime, there are many things that block Cambodia to move forward:

1. Cambodia leader has or had a communist leader and his image was not good. Foreigners look down on Cambodians. It started from our leaders and down to the lower levels.

2. Cambodian economy have economic deadlock. We cannot export our products to the neighboring countries because those of the neighboring countries are the exporting countries. Our products cannot compete with the neighboring countries because most of the direct/indirect materials are imported from the neighboring countries. More importantly, the corruptions are still existing everywhere. We cannot reduce the gasoline price. Therefore, we need to sell at higher prices than the neighbors.

3. The Cambodian people are raised differently from people in the neighboring countries. Most Cambodian people studied Business, Management, Finance, Economy and Law. In the neighboring countries, people studied engineering, manufacturing, electronic, computer sciences, medicine, nursing and social development so on.

4. Most Cambodians in overseas who are highly educated have never wanted to return to Cambodia. They don't trust the stability of Cambodian economy and low-paid jobs.

5. Most graduate students who got scholarships to study overseas tried to look for Cambodian-Americans people to marry in order to stay there. Most people, who cannot find high-paid jobs in the US/AUS/Canada or people cannot find someone to marry, will return to Cambodia.

6. We chose the wrong superpower. China is the biggest exporting country in the world. China exported, not only industrial materials, but also agricultural materials. Therefore, China can only help to accept some of our exported products. However, if we chose the US or other developed countries whose strong economies were based on high technology and industry, the big industrial country, we will have more chances to export our product and attract billionaire investors to Cambodia.

Overall, to stabilize our country, both economically and politically, we should change the leader (we can choose another leader whose image are good in the public eyes from any current government or opposing parties). Especially, we should eliminate corruptions which are the roots of all the problems of Cambodian development.

Even though we probably cannot change our democratic/communist regime, I am happy to see P.M. Hun Sen resign and let one of his educated sons or others to be our leader. At least, we can reduce the bad image. Optimistically, we can reduce more corruptions.

5 March 2013 7:10 pm
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Cambodia is 20 years behind Vietnam and 35 years behind Thailand
Anonymous said... 

The issue of avoiding the comparison between Cambodia to her neighbors was nothing new. Since 1945, Cambodia has been always 15 years behind Thailand in term of infrastructure development- 8 years behind South Vietnam in term of economic developments and 20 years in term of military might because the US poured billions of dollars to build the South Vietnamese National Army, the 4th strongest army in the world in 1968-1975 and peaked at 1971. Cambodia was equal to Laos in 1970, but now is 3 years behind Laos in term of Gross Domestic Capita Income.

Now Cambodia has been further 20 years behind Vietnam's economy and 35 years behind Thailand, not to mention military might.

Cambodia has been always behind regardless now or/and in the past...And never will catch up but can get a close gap.
6 March 2013 1:12 am 
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Hun Sen and Pol Pot are two of the same monsters
Anonymous said... 

Even Hun Sen compares his Cambodia with Pol Pot's  Cambodia, his is worse than Pol Pot'.
These two monsters was and is Khmers' killers more or less but Pol Pot had kept &
protected Cambodia's territorial integrity and natural resources .
Khmers did not inherit debts from Pol Pot . Hun Sen has started from zero debts to $10 billion in
debts, from big Cambodia to a smaller one . Only his family's and his cronies' wealth
have been progressed .

6 March 2013 10:35 am

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent work as usual by Khmerization.

Thank you for your time.

Khmerization said...

8:41 pm, thanks for your compliments. These days I don't have much time to write, only posting.

Anonymous said...

Happy to see civilized debate. Both presented very good points and both are right. Only Hun Sen is wrong because he is solely to blame for Cambodia's backwardness.

Anonymous said...

five eyes fold men to describe what is the elephant look like? Those countries, Israel, German, Japan and so forth...are examples of getting on their feet became properous from devastating wars and other man made tragedies.
Cambodia is alike, the difference, my point, is not to compare an apple and orange, but the illustrate the fundamental foundation between those countries, their people characters to Cambodia. Those countries and people were very good working ethic and quite intelligent with business and industrial knowledges before the wars took them apart. Even Jews who lived in Europe before Worl War II had very successsful businessmen, bankers, industrialists, highly intellectual, and so forth. Those people (Jews, German,and Japanese) have set the strong foundation for their families and community to follow suit. In otehr words, The blueprint of DNA has been printed and stored. Look at the example of one highly educated or rich family (don't make me wrong, few of them can be dysfunctional but majority are on the track), The successful of their families will spread from generationto generation, when the foundation has been set right at th beginning despite any devastating sequences happened. Unfortunately, Cambodia and her people happened to be brought to the world with agrogarian society where 80% of people were not finished high school and unheard of electricity or automobile or telephone, even radio before the war took place in 1970. It is like a poor person has been rampaged by a severe and fatal serious diseases and lack of resources to recover from the devastasting effect. The point is not only lacking of the resources but the level of skills in managing getting them out of the hole was not even closed to comaparation to the skills of Jews, Japanese and German people possessed) after the war ended, where they put their skills to work right away and along with strong dedicate commitment to rebuild.
When I'm talking about people , I mean to include every person living and breathing on those countries including the leaders.
So give yourself in comparation between used to be highly educated or rich family before and after devastating events.
I know Cambodia is quite different, where Hun Sen and some of his patronage families used to be farmers but are now quite rch but that's is not my point of argument. They are rich because of the power they possessed to make them rich, not from the skills, they honestly earned. And that's why Cambodia take a long and uncertainty road to rebuild the country. There are different between using earned honest skills to manage resources and using earned possessing power to manage resources.
Good luck and God bless Cambodian people.

Anonymous said...

Hun Sen is the typical of Khmer Khmer Rouge leaders who put all the blames to other
persons or countries for the failure of their policies .
- 40 years after Khmer Civil War , Hun Sen is still blaming US bombing for destroying
Khmer forests and natural resources . Hun Sen , himself admitted that there has been
illigal & legal logging which have not generated none or little revenue . He ordered
the deforestation to stop or else he cut his head off . Hun sen has failed to follow what
he said , the Khmers's forests has been destroyed for benefit of few people .
He has signed Land Concession for 99 years for Vietnam & China which benefit to
his family & croniies but tax revenue to national coffer .
Most of business deal that Hun Sen has signed haven't gone through fair , transparent
biddings which have lost national revenue eg Angkor Wat has been contracted with
Sok Kong for only less than seven million against a Japanese offer ( $25 million ?) .
Pervasive corruption lost National Revenue , not US bombing .
Hun Sen is Jack of all trades , he knows everything : military , economy , education ,
environment , border marcation ect .. If anyone gives him any suggestion he chastises
him/her and will be chased out of the country or jailed ( Sean Peng Se , Meung Son ,Mom Sonando , Ranariddh , Sam Ransi etc. ) . There are thousand of educated
Khmers abroad but Hun Sen who is holding a grip tightly for his power is repudiating
their helps . Pervasive corruption in School has ruined Khmers human resource .
Yet , after 34 years he is still blaming Pol Pot for destroying educated Khmers for his
failure .If Hun Sen still ruling , 20 years from now, Cambodia natural resources are gone
Khmers will inherit more debt and Hun Sen will still blame Pol Pot , not his failure .

Anonymous said...

Ladies and Gentlmen,

We are wasting our time debating something that is secondary to Cambodia's problems.

Even if Hun Sen is successful in making progress in all major sectors, including raising the standard of living of the people or building more and better infrastructure, still Cambodia is heading toward a deadly cliff.
Please remember, if not stopped in time
" We are Making Improvements on the Landlord's
Property ". And sadly enough, that landlord is Yuon !!!

Let's work diligently on the single OWNERSHIP of Cambodia first.

Anonymous said...

Hun Sen/CPP [and through this the Cambodian people] may be the tenant, but by this tool and tenancy the voice of the Land Lord [Hanoi] is heard and communicated daily to the long suffering Khmer people and the outside world.

Any claim of so-called improvement in any field are meant as favourable PR exercise for the Landlord that helps perpetuate and validate that tenant-landlord relationship and arrangement. This is why it is necessary and timely to refute such claims of "progress" or improvements made by this regime.

That's what some of us are trying to do on Cambodia's behalf.



Anonymous said...

11:50 PM

While maintaining my position, I understand and accept your explanation.
More importantly, you responded in a civil manner, and we all appreciate it.
Thank you