Category: Government and Society

IDPD 2018

Today was Cambodia’s official celebration of the International Day for People with Disabilities.  The UN-designated day was 3 December but the government here transferred the celebration to today.  The annual event is rather a charade.  No person with a disability spoke or had any role in the planning or enacting of the celebration.  No person with a disability was even on the stage except for Mr. Veasna, in a wheelchair, who is head of the National Center for People with Disabilities.  We were required to be in the hall 1.5 to 2 hours before the starting point, the deputy prime minister spoke for 1.5 hours, they gave $1.25 to each person with a disability, and that was it.

The deputy prime minister spoke an hour and a half, the only event of the celebration.
This was the reaction of the people with disabilities sitting beside and behind me.
This our DDP sign language interpreter. Notice how many of the deaf people are following the interpretation she is giving of the speech.

You think you’ve got it bad…

Headlines and news reports from United States media frequently make reference to the campaign to raise the minimum wage in the U.S. to $15 an hour.  The minimum wage is also a matter for discussion in Cambodia but here the goal of organized labor is a minimum wage of $182 PER MONTH.  The current wage norm here is $170 per month, raised before last July’s elections in order to get the garment industry workers to support the ruling party.

It’s no wonder why….

Tens of thousands of garment factory workers–usually young women–ride to work each day jammed, standing up, in the back of open trucks.  Many of them are killed in the frequent accidents when trucks overturn and collide from speeding and throw bodies everywhere.  The government’s response? “Training” drivers to obey the law and “urging” them to get driver’s licenses.  That’s a neat idea.

Cambodian Government 7

Today’s Khmer Times newspaper has this article about a woman jailed for throwing a shoe at a billboard image of the prime minister!  The prime minister regularly reminds the people that he is not a dictator and government spokesmen repeat again and again the claim that human and civil rights are respected.  Does this look anyone has freedom of speech?  Basically it shows how weak and insecure the current government is when they feel they need to prosecute such a trivial event.

But he’s not a dictator! (He says.)

Last month Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party won all 125 seats in the legislature.  That would be a truly remarkable accomplishment in a real election in a real democracy.  But the CPP didn’t play by the normal rules.  First the leadership of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was arrested and jailed or forced into exile.  Then the party itself was declared illegal and dissolved.  Since the CNRP was the only strong opposition party, it’s no wonder that the CPP took all the marbles.

Hun Sen faced a barrage of international criticism for not allowing a free and fair election.  He anticipated that so in the eighteen months before the election, he encouraged (maybe even created) opposition parties which “contested” the election he won so handily.  Of course because they were small, new, and inexperienced—and so many, the nineteen opposition parties couldn’t capture much of the vote.  Hun Sen touted their participation in the election, though, to counter claims that it was a one-party election.

Another move after the election, to further counter the claims of a rigged election, has been to release the opposition members his courts had jailed before the election.  See the headline above.  The opposition leaders had been nullified during the campaign and now are no longer a threat so he appeals to the king to issue royal pardons and he thinks it makes him look good and “kind” (his word).  I think most people see through that ruse, though.