Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hikes to teachers, garment workers, and civil servants. Hun Sen's student land titling
teams returned to the field. The courts released from prison the two men framed for
the Chea Vichea killing, as well as Yorm Bopha, the anti-eviction activist from Boeung
Kak lake. At the same time the government announced a cabinet reshuffle. Many-armed
Sok An saw his portfolio of chairmanships slashed. Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh
was cashiered and kicked upstairs to a new Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts. Tak-
ing Prasidh's place was Sun Chanthol, a former General Electric executive who returned
to Cambodia in the 1990s. The Ministry of Education was given to Hang Chuon Naron,
widely regarded as one of the CPP's most capable technocrats, who immediately an-
nounced reforms and promised to tackle schoolyard corruption. The government made
pledges to reform and clean-up the court system. As always, it looked impressive on pa-
per. But it did little in the short term to slow the system's circular inertia. In the coun-
tryside, the land-grabs and logging continued; in mid-2014, the
Cambodia Daily
reported
that the Lower Sesan 2 dam project in Stung Treng province was being used as a giant
laundry for illegally felled timber, a scheme which it linked to Kith Meng, the chairman
of the Royal Group, and another firm owned by Sok Vanna, a brother of Sokimex chair-
man Sok Kong.
2
While the CNRP was boycotting parliament, CPP lawmakers approved a series of judi-
cial reform laws that strengthened and formalized the executive's control over the courts.
The new laws, the product of years of “partnership” and “technical assistance” from
donors, were passed just as the courts were prosecuting a series of spurious cases against
demonstrators arrested during the post-election protests. The comically flawed proceed-
ings all ended the same way: guilty verdicts for the accused, who were then freed with
suspended sentences as an ostentatious sop to Western governments and donor constitu-
encies. The message was clear: reform would come like everything else in Hun Sen's
Cambodia—as a gift from the party. But it remained to be seen whether tweaks to Hun
Sen's system would allow him to retain power until the age of 74, which he nominated
before the election as his planned age of retirement.
3
Equally uncertain was whether the opposition could offer a credible alternative. As a
vessel for the people's desires for change, the CNRP was an ambiguous choice. It was
good at organizing street protests, but there was no indication the party had the resources
to run the country, or pay for the massive wage hikes and pensions it promised voters.
There also remained a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to the party and its president. To a foreign
audience, Rainsy still presented himself as the last best hope of Cambodian democracy,
fully fluent in the pieties and symbol-politics of the human rights international. On his
rural campaign tour, however, Rainsy's speeches were filled with the same sorts of ra-
cially charged rhetoric as in the 1990s. “We have been eating sour Vietnamese soup for
30 years,” he told a cheering crowd in Svay Rieng on July 25. “It's time for that to stop.”
