10,000 Days

Hun Sen, the Prime Minister of Cambodia has been in power for 10,000 days, and is in the top 10 longest running political leaders in the world. He was a commander for the Khmer Rouge regime and has been part of the government since 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime was toppled, although given the number of former Khmer Rouge party members that are politicians it could be questioned how defeated it is. 

Last week Cambodia had elections, and whilst I’d been aware since arriving here that it was unlikely that these elections would be particularly fair I wasn’t quite prepared for the scale of it. When I was working at the hospital this morning I started talking to one of the other people that work there, originally about learning English, which is how a lot of my conversations seem to start here! He began telling me about how learning English or French had been banned when he was growing up so his spoken English wasn’t as good as anyone who knew or taught either of these languages was killed. In fact, as he kept talking ‘killed’ was a word that seemed to feature far too often, especially as he talked about more and more recent things. We got around to talking about Hun Sen and his ‘friendships’ with Vietnam and China and the massive amount of corruption in Cambodia. On every level in the government there is corruption, from trying to get your child into school, to getting Cambodian citizenship, to voting. 

This last topic was very interesting, but as we talked about it I had a sinking feeling. It was far worse than I had ever possibly thought and so far from the way politics are at home. I found myself angry at the system and for once actually wanting to do something political, not because of the politics but because of the injustice of the whole system. The top 3 ways he suggested of your vote for the opposition party going astray were:

1.       

When you are registered in your village to vote, if you are known to support the opposition party the head of the village (who is commonly given rice, oil and money from the CPP) can ‘accidentally’ mis-spell your name so that when you go to vote you are not allowed to as your name is incorrectly written.

2.      It is suggested to you that if you don’t vote for the CPP (Cambodian People’s Party) then you will struggle to find a job, make money or live. There is also the slightly less subtle threat of physical violence, and Cambodia has recent history of large numbers of opposition party members being killed. The leader of the opposition party is currently exiled from Cambodia on a prison sentence of 10 years for peaceful protest.

3.      Your vote will go ‘missing’ from the ballot box (he suggested that the people policing the voting station could throw it into the river, which is probably not a bad way to dispose of it given the quantities of water in Cambodia).

One of the other problems is the lack of education especially in the provinces as to how a political system works; when they’ve never known anything different they don’t think much of being given some rice in exchange for a fingerprint on a piece of paper.

Corruption in the Cambodian government was a whole other can of worms. The killing of Chut Wutty, one of the top environmentalists in Cambodia in April could likely be traced back to Hun Sen, and the recent minor protests over forced evictions from homes have led to sudden arrests and prison sentences being quickly given in court. The case of 13 women who were forcefully evicted from their homes as the land had been sold off to a Chinese company and then peacefully protested in Phnom Penh has recently been in the news, to the embarrassment of the government. When their case went to court it was at 5am so that no-one was able to attend or cause a fuss and all the streets around the courthouse were closed off. 

The results of the election were that out of 1633 commune chief positions, the CPP were awarded 1600, and the Sam Rainsy Party and Human Rights parties got 22 and 18 each. Sounds like an equal balance really.

As I started writing this, Flo and I were talking about Hun Sen and she cited the road improvements and schools as an indicator that Hun Sen was actually at least partly good. I viewed this rather as his token work towards Cambodia so that he could trade and make alliances internationally without being able to be branded a leader whom no country could associate with. As the person said this morning, Hun Sen has the military, the police, Sorya company, all the land in Cambodia and all the natural resources in his fist, and at the moment there is not much anyone else can do. Anger is growing at him and the political situation but I think it will take a while before he is overthrown, because as Flo put it ‘he isn’t a good leader, but he is good at being a dictator’.