Comments

I know I’ve made a mistake there Vetei on the dollars amount, I meant to say hundreds of millions not billions. My bad!

Thanks bong Kimly,

Even though, the promise of pension, and of increasing wage, and salary for aged, garment workers, and public servants respectively can be one of the driven forces for the support of the opposition party, Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP),but I think one of your argument in the article ” people experience city have a desire to change their livelihood” seems to be perfectly match with the current change of the voters. Furthermore, land grabbing and deforestation policies are also other possible problems that people change their vote ( a good example is a major shift from the ruling party to the opposition party in Kompong Thom, Kompong Speu, Kandal, Battambang, and Prey Veng provinces. Also, social media (facebook, popular for youths) can be a perfect exemplar for the voter to change because majority of the opposition supporters are youths who can use modern communication, in particular facebook. These youths can access to social problems such as deforestation, malpractice of social services, widespread corruption, injustice, and nepotism. Some extremists and nationalists agitated the long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen’s economic policy that has dividend society into different classes: rich, middle income, and poor. Majority of both rich, and middle income receive economic better off if compared to the poor.

Apart from the CNRP’s good economic policy, communication (facebook), which are popular among the youths, can be another influence on the voters’ attitude.

“Aung San Suu Kyi, the (ex-)”democracy icon””

Here, tocharian, is a “copy and paste” from Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saruman about a novel made into another series of big-bug movie.

“Saruman the White is a fictional character and a major antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is leader of the Istari, wizards sent to Middle-earth in human form by the godlike Valar to challenge Sauron, the main antagonist of the novel, but eventually desires Sauron’s power for himself and tries to help the Dark Lord take over Middle-earth. ”

“Saruman “was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare raise our hands against” but decays as the book goes on.[32] Patricia Meyer Spacks calls him “one of the main case histories [in the book] of the gradual destructive effect of willing submission to evil wills”.[28] Paul Kocher identifies Saruman’s use of a palant├нr, a seeing-stone, as the immediate cause of his downfall, but also suggests that through his study of “the arts of the enemy”, Saruman was drawn into imitation of Sauron.[33] According to Jonathan Evans and Spacks, Saruman succumbs to the lust for power,[20][28] while Shippey identifies Saruman’s devotion to goals of knowledge, organization and control as his weakness.[34] Tolkien writes that the Istari’s chief temptation (and that to which Saruman fell) is impatience, leading to a desire to force others to do good, and then to a simple desire for power.”

Zarni’s revolving door of major power interests and its players in Burma.

Sandi: Appreciate your comment.

The issues of corruption, social injustice, massive illegal logging, illegal migration, state’s authoritarianism etc that you raised are not new to Cambodia. And the opposition party raised them in their past election campaigns. But the ruling party won and saw their seats kept increasing in 1998, 2003 and 2008 elections. So what can we use to explain about this? Some people may argue that land grabbing or economic land concessions angered people in provinces and led them to vote for the opposition party. But this argument is controversial because we also see some provinces like those in the country’s north and northeast which we also see the issues of land grabbing and economic land concessions, but still people voted for the ruling party.

I came to my arguments because I see that the provinces that we have seen a remarkable votes shifted to the opposition party are those around Phnom Penh. These provinces have received the government’s development priority compared to those at the periphery. The provinces around Phnom Penh are also those which supply labour to the garment industry sector and also home to the majority of the country’s public servants.

10, 150 and 250 $ a month is not much to the city elites, but it means alot to ordinary workers and public servants. If you have chance, you talk to them and ask them about this. $10 is also alot of money for the old in the rural villages. You can try this yourself. You give an old man/woman let say 5000 Riels which is equivalent to about 1.5 dollar, you will see the response…he/she smiles, thank you, and offer a long sentence of good wishes to you.

An excellent analysis. Regarding CNRP’s appeal in the rural provinces, I offer one observation: wherever I go in PP this week, I meet PP residents who voted in the provinces, especially the provonces close to the capital – in other words, the ones where the CNRP did well. I don’t know why, but it seems many residents of PP are registered in the villages instead of the capital – and all of them are young.

I totally agree to your main argument (the opposition party (CNRP) gaining voter support because of his party’s policy, of demographic, of social media (in particular FB) of corruption, and of injustice in society), but let alone the long serving honorable, Prime Minister, Hus Sen may become a victim of his own success (rapid urban development, and improvement of infrastructure such roads, and bridges). I argue that Prime Minister, Hun Sen is not a victim of his own success, but he is a victim of his own political party’s policy, and his stronghold in the government power to control juridical system, and legislative branches.

Hus Sen’s rapid development policy of constructing roads and bridge to what extend caused a large scale of outrage because of poor quality of development (corruption), and lack of technical construction. Some roads and bridges can easily damaged or collapsed. While, the lack of technical construction rose traffic death tolls eventually.

Furthermore, land concession policy was establishing an in-amiable solution (trade-off). This policy created inequality in society, because the rich becomes richer, while the poor becomes even poorer. More million hectares of land concession provided to foreign companies; a large proportion of this land concession was granted to Vietnamese companies, which some Cambodian people are racism to this international investors. Also, farmers lost their cut-burnt cultivation; others lost their settlements and religious practices

While, filling natural lakes in the capital city, Phnom Penh, for commercial purposes causes another anger. The residents living along these natural lake banks, and some rely on their water vegetable cultivation were forced to abandon their residents, and farming practices. While other city dwellers who indirectly impacted from this filling natural lacks felt unhappy because of the capital city eco-system change due to flood when there was a torrential/heavy rains in the monsoon season. This long last flood in the capital city was not, in fact, due to climate change, but it was due to the poor, and non-technical sewage system. Also, another cause of this flood may be because of poor effluent and solid waste management.

All the above-mentioned policy (urban development and land concession) lead to not only the loss of voter support, but the Cambodian diaspora, and labor workers living across the developing countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and European countries unavoidably shifted their support to CNRP. They provided both financial and emotional support (called to their relatives to ask them to cast their vote for change).

Not to mention any other factors, the stronghold of his office to dominate other powers such as legislative and juridical branches could be the diminishing return of his power policy. A policy of firing, and promoting staffs in the senior government, juridical, and legislative branches could lead to distrust of this leadership. This can lead to anger; therefore, some senior staff changed their support to CNRP.

I dont think these 10,150,250 $ money can attract massive people on to the street but the sense of not able to bear with injustic of court and in society ,corruption, massive illigal logging and resource destroy, massive illigal imigration in country and power in group …etc , which pollutes country much more than promise of 10, 150 and 250

The CNRP is making promises to the poor people of Cambodia that they can’t keep. Where r they gonna get the money to pay on their promises of $10 for old people 65 n over?, increase wages for civil servants to $250? These two alone would cost billions already, the money the government dont have. Another, how r u gonna make the garment n shoe industries pay their worker $150 a month? When they won’t even pay $100. If u force them to, they would just leave Cambodia altogether n move their operations somewhere else where labor n wages r cheap, like Burma n Babgladesh. Wut would happen to the more than 400000 workers do then. Riot in the street, causing mayhem n anarchy! Pls, the CNRPpromisses r cheap election tactics, nothing else. They know they can’t win the election against Mr Hun Sen if they use convention methods, so they have to come up wid these deceptive methods.

Just thought I’d add a related and relevant link: ‘Halal Monk’It’s a very interesting webproject of interreligious dialogue in the sense that it collects the conversations of a Christian theologian with influential spiritual leaders and important artists of the Muslim world.