Hunsenomics and Its Discontents - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 147

to open the local Ernst & Young office, says graduates in his in-demand field are so ill-
equipped that they have to be retrained from scratch: “They'll have a bachelor's degree in
accounting, [but] you put them to work and they don't even know how to do basic book-
keeping.” The French oil giant Total, meanwhile, runs its own courses for engineers.
The social implications of the growing reservoir of restless youth can be seen each day
in the local media, which has documented the recent surge in gang violence and drug
use—especially crystallized methamphetamine, or “ice.” Economically, too, the effects of
the education crisis could be catastrophic. Without improvements in the quality of school-
ing, the system threatens to strand Cambodia at its current stage of development—as a
factory floor of international capital.
Oknha Mong Reththy leans back in his chair and casts an eye over a career's worth of
trinkets and mementoes. Sitting on a wooden cabinet in his air-conditioned office are the
rubber sandals that he wore after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. “I cut the car tire
myself,” he says. On the other side of the room is a black-and-white photo of a thinner
Reththy in the robes of a Buddhist monk, taken in the mid-1960s when he lived at Wat
Neakavoan and befriended a young temple boy named Hun Sen. Behind glass doors are
the fruits of his lifetime association with the prime minister, including state medals stored
in wooden display boxes, which Reththy wears in the official portrait on his website,
above a flowery passage praising him for the “simplicity of his heart, normality of his
thought, hardworking of his legs and hands, gracefulness of his consciousness, wisdom
of his brain, socialization of his body, and his smile.” 47
Few of these are immediately evident—except perhaps the smile, which arises under
arching eyebrows and shortly-cropped black hair. The 55-year-old Reththy is in an ex-
pansive mood, proud to speak of his business successes and close partnership with the
prime minister. Dubbed “Hun Sen's money man” by US officials, he has had a career
which nicely illustrates the circular principles of Hunsenomics. Since the 1990s he has
contributed millions toward the construction of Hun Sen schools, and his Samnang Kh-
meng Wat (Pagoda Boy Construction) company has an exclusive contract for the prime
minister's charity projects, which include schools, roads, bridges, drainage dikes, and re-
ligious facilities. 48 Like Sok Kong of Sokimex, he has benefited from these close ties: his
Mong Reththy Group boasts extensive interests in rubber and palm oil plantations, live-
stock, and real estate, as well as a private port (named after him) close to Sihanoukville.
In 1996 Reththy underwent the Cambodian tycoon's rite of passage and was anointed an
oknha by King Sihanouk; in 2006 he was elected a senator for the CPP.
Loyalty has also purchased protection. In April 1997, when officials in Sihanoukville
seized seven tons of marijuana disguised as a rubber shipment accompanied by docu-
mentation bearing the stamps of one of Reththy's companies, Hun Sen publicly defended