Category: Government and Society

The scale and pervasiveness of corruption and incompetence in the Cambodian government is really staggering.  The Kingdom of Wonder indeed.  Today’s article focuses on the police–just as corrupt as the rest of officialdom.

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Wednesday, 9 August 2017  Hun Sen’s Violent Rhetoric: Will Words Become Deeds in 2018?  Government Rights Chief Calls Beating Threats ‘Education’ Seized Tractors, Used by Police Officers, to Be Returned to HQ Thursday, 10 August 2017 Ministry Vows to Stop Illegal Thai Border Crossings Authorities, Village Residents Set for Clash in Angkor Park Court Upholds ‘Espionage’ Charge for Australian Filmmaker Cambodia Urges Patience in Making ASEAN, N Korea Statements Indigenous Groups Call for Respect, Land Titles on UN Day Gov’t Officials, Plainclothes Police Crash Village Protest Meeting

 

The scale and pervasiveness of corruption and incompetence in the Cambodian government is really staggering.  The Kingdom of Wonder indeed.  An outsider would have a hard time understanding how bad things are.  To help such an outsider grasp the enormity of the situation here, look at these selections from articles in two editions of The Cambodia Daily this week.  To me it is really interesting that the government seems to ignore what the Daily prints.  The government regularly intimidates, threatens, imprisons, beats, shoots, kills critics and opposition people and yet the English newspapers seem to get away printing some really strong—truthful–articles that paint the government in a most obvious bad light.

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Wednesday, 9 August 2017  Hun Sen’s Violent Rhetoric: Will Words Become Deeds in 2018?  Government Rights Chief Calls Beating Threats ‘Education’ Thursday, 10 August 2017 Ministry Vows to Stop Illegal Thai Border Crossings Authorities, Village Residents Set for Clash in Angkor Park Court Upholds ‘Espionage’ Charge for Australian Filmmaker Cambodia Urges Patience in Making ASEAN, N Korea Statements Indigenous Groups Call for Respect, Land Titles on UN Day Gov’t Officials, Plainclothes Police Crash Village Protest Meeting

 

The scale and pervasiveness of corruption and incompetence in the Cambodian government is really staggering.  The Kingdom of Wonder indeed.  An outsider would have a hard time understanding how bad things are.  To help such an outsider grasp the enormity of the situation here, look at these selections from articles in two editions of The Cambodia Daily this week.  To me it is really interesting that the government seems to ignore what the Daily prints.  The government regularly intimidates, threatens, imprisons, beats, shoots, kills critics and opposition people and yet the English newspapers seem to get away printing some really strong—truthful–articles that paint the government in a most obvious bad light.

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Wednesday, 9 August 2017  Hun Sen’s Violent Rhetoric: Will Words Become Deeds in 2018?  Government Rights Chief Calls Beating Threats ‘Education’ Thursday, 10 August 2017 Ministry Vows to Stop Illegal Thai Border Crossings Authorities, Village Residents Set for Clash in Angkor Park Court Upholds ‘Espionage’ Charge for Australian Filmmaker Cambodia Urges Patience in Making ASEAN, N Korea Statements Indigenous Groups Call for Respect, Land Titles on UN Day Gov’t Officials, Plainclothes Police Crash Village Protest Meeting

 

We are in the middle of a three-day holiday for the birthday of King Norodom Sihamoni seen here visiting a family in the provinces.  The king is a really nice person–the only smiling, human face in the government—but why three days for a birthday?  That is why Cambodia has twenty-five public government holidays.  The US has eleven.  How do you rebuild a country when no one works?

This is the Buddhist Center, a very important place in Cambodian Buddhism.  When I first came I was told that there were to be no buildings put up nearby that would overshadow the center and compete with it for importance.  Well, there’s a lot of money to be made in Cambodia now, if you have money to begin with, and so the tycoons in the senate conveniently have arranged for the zoning guidelines to be ignored.