April 17, 1975 !

http://youtu.be/rI8JZ4U9gTI

For those hopeful MP candidates: What to look out for...(cont)

For those hopeful MP candidates: What to look out for...(Continues)

4-Watch for the misinformation:

It is tricky indeed when "misinformation" becomes the only "information" you are given and you need to really digest.

As an outsider who have been exposed to different standard of morality, belief and background. You will have to learn how to separate facts and fictions on your own. Propaganda is being used and abused not only to mislead the public, but you can be deceived as well.

You may hear statements like these: "The whole country is supporting us! (like the collapse of the Earth and Water )", "The CPP is crumbled and many of its members will join us!", "Renown elites with high educational backgrounds or degrees will be supporting us and many of them are supporting us in secret."

The above statements may be used to lure you in, to secure your support and to give you hope. One of the biggest misconceptions is the notion that many CPP members or people who work  for the CPP support the CPP because they have no choice. It's a delusion. 

All CPP members are in "the CPP" together for better or worse. With Cambodia's national resources under its management for decades, this organization has become financially strong and it has given plenty of benefits and reasons for its members to bind together for life. Thanks to the many overseas Cambodians who have used their skills to help make that happen.

Although some of the so-called hidden well educated people may be sympathetic with your cause, they are not courageous enough to join your party. Their self-interests are still bigger than what we call national interests and in addition they do not have much confidence in your leaders. Your leaders know this quite well that  your party will never get the real support from the "ghosts," but telling you the truth is not an option. Those invisible educated individuals will remain unknown, perhaps, forever.

The best way for you to deal with this is to ask your leaders point blank for the names of those would be supporters. Generally, you will hear silence or you would be told that those names are being withheld for future announcement or for their safety. Be prepared for the "no show" meetings from those ghosts.

Most information you receive are distorted.  You will hear some party's leaders misinform you about the many things including the half-truth about your party and its organization. 

What you call the "political party" is merely a group of individuals who operate their political business as a private enterprise owned by a few influential people. This must be restructured . Hence, do not expect to see your party leaders use democratic principles as you know or learn them in the West. Whether it is intentionally or not, the word "democracy" is improperly used and in principle it is grossly misapplied and manipulated.

Most importantly you should take notice and be aware that the organizational structures of your party are still weak and fragile.  It is unquestionable. Most of its leaders are not well trained or simply inexperienced to lead or to follow. Some are just the "24-hour" recruits. This may relate to the financial problems--the problems that can be addressed with the changing of the mental and moral attitude of your political leaders.

Financially, your party is mostly backed by dwindling donors from overseas Cambodians. Unless a drastic change is made the supports from these people will come to an end. Leadership qualities, integrity, good morality and skills must be installed. 

Regardless how much you love your country, if you don't have the money to run the campaigns, you will not get enough votes to win additional seats. 

You may wonder if such an organization can effectively run Cambodia, right? 

Just remember this: if you have doubt about your organization, other Cambodian people will surely have the same impression.

To be continued...

We should thank Mr. Obama for "seeing" Cambodia!

We should thank Mr. Obama for "seeing" Cambodia--the way it is!

There is no reason why Cambodians, especially the oppositions, should be worried about President Barack Obama’s visit to Cambodia.

We should let Mr. Obama see for himself the present Cambodia and Cambodian situations under Hun Sen’s ruling. Mr. Obama should be able to pick up the positive and negative sides of all developments like economic, social, political and human rights, etc…

What Cambodian oppositions should do is not to try to stop Mr. Obama from going to Cambodia or to attempt to cause any disturbance during his visit. Such attitudes will only backfire.

Many leaders of the world mostly possess positive mental attitude toward many things, hence they may view the attitude of the oppositions as nothing more than just griping in order to grab some attentions.

When people possess optimistic mental attitude, they only pay attention on the positive outcomes and not to dwell of bad things. They tend to see good things on the road and not the garbage on the roadside. Meanwhile those who have negative mental attitude see only the garbage and rarely see good things within the surroundings.

President Barack Obama waves as he leaves the White House in Washington, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, for a trip to Southeast Asia. Obama will seek to reinforce American influence in Southeast Asia in spite of the large shadow cast by China. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

It is very important for the Cambodian oppositions to recognize and acknowledge that there are improvements in Cambodia in the recent years but there are other issues of concerns that need to be addressed and address them with the positive mental attitude.

The Cambodian opposition’s leaders must change the way they act and the way they think. They must move from the negative to the positive side. Fighting from the dark side may be viewed as an act of fearfulness and fear is one of the major negative emotions. Cursing, complaining, demanding or protesting to get help is not an effective approach to reach out to world’s leaders—those leaders simply don’t have the time to be negative.

President Obama is the President of the United States. He will do whatever is best for America and for the American’s interests. Cambodians must remember that. All actions taken by the U.S leaders will be weighing out carefully for their own national benefits.

The oppositions should be thankful for Mr. Obama’s visit to Cambodia and should be looking for a positive ways to help him see and deal with Cambodia for the benefit of both countries. They should become the positive force to help rebuild Cambodia not a negative entity that can sap energy away from the countries or people who are willing to lend a hand.

Change!

Timothy Chhim
New York
November 17, 2012

Congratulations Sam Rainsy: A good move to reconcile

Congratulations to Sam Rainsy for reaching out.

Mr. Sam Rainsy (L) and Mr. Hun Sen during an unexpected meeting in front of the National Assembly in 2006.

http://www.voacambodia.com/articleprintview/1528966.html

It is now up to Premier Hun Sen and His Majesty King Sihamoni to help reconcile among all Khmer brothers.

On October 15 I wrote on this blog suggesting that a phone call should be made (by someone).... and all Khmers should use this sad  occasion to reconcile. Now 3 days later, Sam Rainsy has made a move to reach out.  Congratulations.

If you think you can, you can.

Timothy Chhim
October 18, 2012.

Yes, We Can Win Without the God King

Yes, we can win!

Losing a God King? Let's respectfully mourn and move on.

Stop accepting that we are the victim: the victim of the French colonialist, the past unsuccessful policy of King Sihanouk, the failed policy of Pol Pot, the Vietnamese cruelty and the regime's brutality, etc… because when we think and accept that we are the victim, we are the victim—forever.

We must rise above being the victim for we are not. We were born as Khmer and as Khmer we can become as strong as anyone out there in the world and we have proofs. The proofs are not just thousands of monuments and footprints out there throughout Southeast Asia and the world but they are in our blood, heart, mind and spirit.

Picture: From Travelog.Org

What ever happened in the past can be used as seeds, as stepping stones and as great lessons for us to move forward to rebuild and construct a bright and dazzling Cambodia. We must learn from all factors that have led to Cambodia’s temporary defeats with the understanding that every defeat carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit when we have the right and positive mental attitude—the attitude of being the victor instead of being the victim.

We have to realize that each defeat is just a temporary setback and not the total failure and we have to understand that it takes many defeats to achieve the final victory—comparing to a baby who needs to learn from his falls… so many times in order for him to stand up, walk and then run.

We must get off our knees and stand up to face all current challenges: immorality, poverty, oppression and foreign control.

To get off our knees is to take possession of our mind and use it. And we must use it … with the positive mental attitude that we are now and will be the victor---we are no longer the victim: No more crying for help, no more self pity, no more belittling ourselves, no more fearing and no more accepting any notion that Khmers are losers and cannot win--- for a loser and a victim are all the same.

From now on we declare that we are the winner and we can do whatever we want to rebuild and construct our own life as well as our country… and we can do it as a person, a family, a society and finally as a great nation.

Take possession of our mind, put our mind and thoughts together collectively and harmoniously and the victory is awaiting just a few steps away.

Yes, we can win! And we can win without the former King.

Timothy Chhim

October 18, 2012

To GOVERN is to EAT THE KINGOM? Help!!!

I have read Brinkley’s "Cambodia's Curse." It's a well written book. There are many lessons that Cambodians can learn from his book, but there are many flaws as well. Mistakes can be found. That's normal in any book. But Joel needs to stay in Cambodia much longer to learn the heart and soul of Cambodians.

I was laughing my head off when I read the translation of the word “GOVERN”.
I cannot find any sources in my personal library or in Khmer literatures relating to the word "to govern” that could be literally translated as "to eat the Kingdom."  Maybe it was being translated by the new "Cambodian" generation? Regardless how hard I look, or how hard I think, I just can’t find any Khmer words that can literally means “to eat the Kingdom.” The closest one I came up with is the word, “Soy-Reach.” Here, to the upper left, is the translation of the compound word: SOY REACH.

Can anyone help me looking for other Khmer words that means: to eat the Kingdom?

Please enjoy Mr. Cain's comment from the Wall Street Journal.
=====================

Misruling Cambodia

Corruption is rife and dissent is stifled, as "Cambodia's Curse" shows. But entrepreneurs are giving the country some hope.

By GEOFFREY CAIN


If schools are a reflection of society, then they show Cambodia to be a limp and defeated nation. On the first day of class, Cambodian children learn they must bribe their teachers to get good grades, a practice that continues for the 3% of them who make it to college. Teachers, struggling on salaries of less than $100 a month, take their cuts and pass the money up to the principals. The principals then pay off local education officials, and so on to higher circles of government. In the end, those who give the largest bribes eventually win promotions—giving them access to even bigger cash flows.

In this system, students learn few useful skills except how to survive under a corrupt regime, writes journalist Joel Brinkley. For the lucky few who pay, and sometimes even murder, their way to the top of the government, life is good. But for the ordinary farmers and laborers, kickbacks are simply an expensive roadblock to economic and social advancement.

"These demands are humiliating. It pushes a lot of smart kids out to the rice fields instead of helping our country," Sok Sopheap, a high school student who was kicked out of class because he didn't pay a bribe, told me. "This is why Cambodia stays poor."

Mr. Brinkley's depressing book is a mostly illuminating, though sometimes lopsided, chronicle of the politicians and bureaucrats who have plagued Cambodian society for the past 30 years. After the Khmer Rouge regime oversaw the deaths of 1.7 million people and was unseated in 1979, a new group of opportunists took their place. That wily clique, installed by the invading Vietnamese, includes current Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) solidified its hold on power in part by manipulating foreign governments and keeping the country poor. Its first big target was the United Nations, which took advantage of the end of a Cold War stalemate in 1989 to attempt a democratic transformation of the country. In 1992, U.N. peacekeepers tried to rebuild the country by launching the most expensive peacekeeping operation at the time—total cost $1.6 billion—and overseeing elections that attracted a remarkable 90% voter turnout.

Mr. Hun Sen lost those elections but refused to step down; four years later, he ended the U.N.'s dream of democracy for Cambodia when he ousted his democratically elected co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranarridh, in armed clashes. Since he has consolidated power, Mr. Hun Sen has repeatedly sued and pushed his critics into exile, and has attempted to stall progress of the Khmer Rouge tribunal.


View Full Image
Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land
By Joel Brinkley
PublicAffairs, 416 pages, $27.99

Nevertheless, foreign governments funded the CPP-led government with $18 billion in aid and soft loans after U.N. peacekeepers departed. The leaders squandered much of this largesse on mansions, luxury cars, private security forces and political pandering—all to further their power. Today, the country loses $500 million a year to corruption, USAID reports.

Mr. Brinkley won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for covering Cambodian refugees, and he weaves the details of the nation's underbelly into a compelling argument, interviewing powerful figures and foreign officials involved in politics, courts, hospitals, land development, forests and schools. Particularly engrossing is his account of the country's infamous 2010 anticorruption law, something the West pushed Phnom Penh to pass since the early 1990s, which would force government offices to face tougher audits.

For 15 years, Mr. Hun Sen repeatedly promised donor countries and organizations that he would pass the law. But while the donors complained every year that he still hadn't, they nonetheless assented to his requests for more money, raising their annual aid pledges from $770 million in 1994 to nearly $1.1 billion by the time Mr. Hun Sen acceded to their requests in 2010.

But the new law hardly meets international standards. It does not require officials to publicly disclose their holdings, the heart of any anticorruption law, and allows them to offer gifts in exchange for favors "in accordance with custom and tradition." The saga becomes yet one more example of the ineffectiveness of foreign aid, and Mr. Brinkley rightly wonders what foreign officials are up to. When he visits the new anticorruption office, he finds that it sends complaints directly to the institutions that the complainants accuse, with their names attached—leaving them open to threats and intimidation.

Such gifted storytelling makes up for some shortcomings, including some minor errors of fact. For instance, Mr. Brinkley writes that a 1997 grenade attack on an opposition rally occurred at a park across from the National Assembly that is named after Mr. Hun Sen. While the location of the blast is correct, it is actually a separate, nearby park that is named after the premier.

More troublesome are Mr. Brinkley's historical arguments. He suggests, for example, that leaders can act with impunity because most Cambodians will not change centuries-old attitudes. Kings traditionally awarded posts to mandarins who paid kickbacks, a scheme that Mr. Brinkley asserts continues uninterrupted.

It is true that Cambodians do not have a history of popular sovereignty, which may help explain why democracy-building faltered. The Khmer language reflects the fact that most Cambodians have low expectations of their leaders: The verb translated into English as "to govern," for example, literally means "to eat the kingdom."

But that fact is a long distance from Mr. Brinkley's sweeping conclusion that Cambodians, timid and wavering by upbringing, accept tyranny because they see no alternative. "They carry no ambitions. They hold no dreams," he writes. "All they want is to be left alone." The first two statements are patronizing and disproven by the growing number of entrepreneurs. The third gives short shrift to the recognition of many Cambodians that democratic government is the surest path to domestic tranquility.

Mr. Brinkley's grim assessments on issues such as corruption and the ineffectiveness of donor aid ring true. Nevertheless, Cambodia is fast shedding its image as a lawless mafia state. The society is, despite all its problems, becoming more stable. Its economy is improving, thanks to limited regulation and taxation. Once pitied as a basket case, Cambodia may yet prove its critics wrong, despite its governance curse.

Mr. Cain is a writer in Vietnam.