Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Heavy rains–it’s the rainy season–plus extra water from a collapsed dam in Laos have raised the river levels quite high in Phnom Penh. Bishop Olivier experienced a bit more difficulty than usual in making visits to the parishes along the river. Click here for more.
She must have as much stuff in front of her as behind her, judging from the angle of her legs! Not fun!
“I’m not PLAYING in the street, I’m DRAWING!!!”
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.
“I’m just glad I’m only delivering this stuff and don’t have to cook it!”
Chickens don’t get no respect in Cambodia!
People in Cambodia want to keep the sun off themselves–it’s hot and makes their skin dark–but foods are left out in the sun to dry throughout Cambodia, in the city as well as the countryside. Click here for some examples in Phnom Penh.
We had the opening ceremony for our religious education program today. We have a great bunch of students and really dedicated staff helping us.
Aaron Wong is a sign language linguist from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For the last three weeks he has been in Cambodia, training the members of our sign language committee in the basics of sign language linguistics to help them promote and develop the national sign language better. Aaron has done a wonderful job, a resource that we have waited for for several years. Today was the last day of the training and after the deaf students expressed their appreciation for his work, Charlie Dittmeier offered him two of the DDP khramas that we give to our visitors.
Today in a ceremony turning over new China-donated fire trucks to local fire stations, the Interior Minister asked the firemen (and women?) not to demand payments and bribes when they arrive at the scene of a fire. How novel!
But his plea could be counter-productive. Who the heck wants to be a fireman if you can’t rip off people and make money for yourself! Not to worry, though. Probably not much will change in the behavior of the fire department personnel (a division of the police in Cambodia) because my guess is a good percentage of the money they extort from fire victims gets passed up the line to superiors.