Looming Letdown

[Alternatives Watch]

Alternatives Watch – 10ix09


LOOMING LETDOWN


Salesman par excellence Sok Chenda may get caught between a rock and a
hard place. On one hand, he has colleagues in government whom he says
he must convince of the goodness of good governance. Fondly referring
to them as his brothers he says he lobbies them hard, telling them,
“The destiny of the country is in your hands, brother”. On the other
hand, Sok Chenda has to convince foreign investors whom he lures with
easy profit.

Claiming to be a go-between, matchmaker Sok Chenda plays a game that
often puts his credibility at risk. He questions the validity and
reliability of the latest World Bank business survey, whose outcomes
are not so flattering for Cambodia, asserting he does not care about
the low ranking. However, he welcomes as “hopeful news” the improved
ranking in the same survey as compared to the previous year’s.
Unfortunately, he cannot have it both ways.

If his lobbying for good governance is as tough as it sounds, some of
his statements could not make his job any more difficult. While
begging his colleagues to adopt good governance, Sok Chenda claims
businessmen do not mind paying bribes as long as they make money at
the end of the day. He maintains the businessmen do not care how long
they have to wait for a business registration, ignoring a business
motto that time is money, and that the long wait identified in the
World Bank survey is one of major investment hurdles. His colleagues
may thus misinterpret his appeal that “we must work harder on trade
facilitation” to mean collecting more facilitation fees.

And the salesman par excellence seems to be losing the battle. First,
the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, is pulling out of
Cambodia after three years of explorations in Mondulkiri. One of the
main reasons is: “the government standing up an uneconomical regime”,
which may have something to do with the high cost of doing business in
Cambodia.
Second, Sok Chenda is so focussed on economic outcomes that he insists
international donors divert all their aid funds from non-economic to
vocational training programs for job creation, which he believes will
reduce poverty. Perhaps the donors see his pet project Special
Economic Zone, which promises jobs outside the Labour Law, as a
legalised form of slave labour. He appears so frustrated when his
repetitive appeals are ignored. When asked about locations of those
Special Economic Zones, Sok Chenda retorts, “Well, they’re not in the
middle of Central Park in New York, if that’s what you think”. The
donors may think the sarcasm is provocative.

It is, thus, unlikely that Sok Chenda will achieve his furtive aim of
bringing prime minister Hun Sen into the league of dictators: Park
Chun Hee, Mahathir, and Lee Kuan Yew, of whom Sok Chenda speaks with
admiration for their economic achievements. Hun Sen does not share the
main attribute that drives the league – intolerance for corruption. He
is not even a dictator, according to the salesman par excellence.


Ung Bun Ang


Quotable Quote:

“Once a political system has been corrupted right from the very top
leaders to the lowest rungs of the bureaucracy, the problem is very
complicated. The cleansing has to start from top and go downwards in a
thorough and systematic way.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923– ), Singaporean statesman.
Straits Times (Singapore).