Potemkin Democracy - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 92

CHAPTER FIVE
Potemkin Democracy
As Cambodia turned its back on the twentieth century, there were many reasons to be hope-
ful. For the first time in half a century it was a country at peace. It had a government that
was more open and tolerant than those in neighboring Vietnam and Laos, where the ham-
mer and sickle still flew proudly, or Burma, inching into the twenty-first century under a
stifling military junta. Cambodia had a democratic constitution, a vibrant civil society, and
a press that appeared to enjoy more freedoms than in many other Asian countries. With
the onset of peace, guns began disappearing from the streets. Foreign investment resumed
and tourists returned to the temples of Angkor in greater numbers than ever. At the end
of 1999, unprecedented crowds turned out in Phnom Penh for the Water Festival and its
traditional boat races and fireworks. There were cheers and an air of celebration as King
Sihanouk opened the festivities and the long boats sliced through the brown waters of the
Tonlé Sap.
But years of civil war had left the country in a desperate state. Life for rural Cambodians
remained nasty, brutish, and—by regional standards—short. A Cambodian born in 1998
could expect to live 53.5 years, the lowest span in Asia. Just a short drive outside Phnom
Penh, an island of affluence in an ocean of poverty, clean water and electricity were rare.
Nearly two-thirds of the population were illiterate, while infant and maternal mortality
rates were among the highest in the region—indicators that were more comparable to the
war-torn states of sub-Saharan Africa than to the economic tigers of Southeast Asia. 1
The Cambodian political class, distracted by the civil war and by the division of power
and its spoils, had paid little attention to most of the country's problems. In 1998, 43 per-
cent of the national budget went toward the bloated army and overstaffed police force,
while health, agriculture, education, and rural development combined accounted for less
than a fifth. 2 There was more wealth sloshing around the cities and towns, but most of
this was controlled by politicians and their well-connected friends. When the National
Assembly convened in November 1998 to approve the new CPP-Funcinpec coalition deal,
Michael Hayes of the Phnom Penh Post noted the hungry villagers who were squatting in