1st February 2012

The Kampuchea Thmey Daily reports Vice-President of the Anti-Corruption Unit, Sean Borat, boasting that his organisation is saving the government almost $US6m a year lost in graft in various ministries.

He said that since its establishment, it had uncovered improper expense claims and ghost budgets at twenty-four of the Kingdom’s institutions. He also claimed that those committing corruption were gradually being discovered and arrested, citing the recent example of the Kandal Provincial judge caught red-handed recently extorting $US5,000 from a victim by threatening to execute an arrest warrant on her if she didn’t pay up.

Many observers are understandably skeptical that the Unit, run by a close associate of the premier, is really capable of effecting real change in the climate of impunity that feeds the patronage networks that are central to how the bureaucracy operates here. This would require real and dramatic public sector reform with real wage increases to replace the informal systems of cash transfers that currently crease the system, they say.

(Donors have been ‘requesting’ compensation reform for at least the last year, given the numerous distortion of the current system of supplementary payments, but this is apparently opposed by the Ministry of Finance that prefers the status quo.)

However, even if it is true that most of those currently being “caught” by the new anti-graft unit are not part of any of the major networks and therefore lack the necessary protection afforded by their links to the “right people”, the actions of the Unit must be starting to shake things up.

No doubt one of the consequences will be to strengthen the hands of the most powerful factions in the CPP by culling the weaker ones or forcing independents into the fold, nevertheless if the Unit can point to such finance successes, it may well strengthen its position and therefore, its freedom of action.

Then if could yet prove the have real teeth. Another indication, perhaps, that the country is slowly on its way to becoming normal?

30^th January 2012

Nearly all of the roughly 300 Cambodian staff employed by the KR Tribunal gathered in the public gallery of the courtroom on Sunday to be told that they would not be paid any salary until April at the earliest, the court’s public affairs officer Huy Vannak told The Phnom Penh Post yesterday.

He also added that Cambodian judges haven’t been paid since October last year.

The Post notes that according to the law establishing the ECCC, expenses and salaries of the 300 Cambodian staff “shall be borne by the Cambodian national budget,” but in practice, this didn’t happen. The 180 international component, meanwhile, are paid directly by international donors via the UN.

Legal adviser at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, Anne Heindel, explained to the Post that the practice was for Cambodian salaries to be paid from voluntary international contributions to the Cambodian government, but Huy Vannack said these international donations had “completely dried up”.

“We have no money,” court spokesman, Neth Pheaktra, told the AFP. “It affects morale at the court. The people depend on their salaries to support their families and it’s not good to go without pay.”

Sad that this may be, many observers are hoping that the donors’ strike will continue, bringing this whole sorry saga to an end.

It comes down to a simple question: given the overwhelming dysfunction at the Tribunal, is there now any compelling reason why more good money should be thrown after bad?

29^th January 2012

..but no one does anything about it!*

There is a old saw that religion is the product of Man’s attempts to communicate with the weather. Certainly the wild fluctuations we appear to be suffering with the weather these days could cause people to seek divine intervention if not solace for their miseries when the weather turns bad.

2009 was a blistering year here in Cambodia, when the hottest temperature reportedly around 39^o Celsius, although with the heat-island effect of all the concrete here in the Penh, it felt like it was in the 40s. Add to that, the cool season seemed to last only a week!

Last year was comparatively cool for much of the year by comparison, but instead we experienced the worst floods in over a decade.

The cool season thankfully lasted for over two months. Even now, with the days warming up, the early mornings are still delightfully cool.

According to the Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology, Lim Kean Hor, this year’s dry season would not be as hot as in 2009, The Rasmei Kampuchea Daily reports. Meanwhile rain would come early and should be plentiful in April.

Apparently this confident prediction is a result of the recent installation of a Doppler weather radar that collects data in a 400-kilometer radius, which allows for more accurate forecasting. In January last year, Meteo France International signed a turn-key contract with the Ministry for the supply of one S-Band Doppler weather radar covering the Kingdom along with the set up of a forecasting and meteorological warning centre. Previously, Cambodia depended on data received from other countries in the region that had similar weather patterns.

As the saying goes, the trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. This new system should help, especially in the field of agriculture.

Now all that is needed is better emergency preparedness for when the next climate calamity is visited upon us.

*Mark Twain

27^th January 2012

The Kampuchea Thmey Daily reports today that, following the claim yesterday by the specialist to the UN, David Scheffer, that Laurent Kasper-Ansermet could continue his work at the KR Tribunal without being endorsed by the Kingdom’s leading legal body, the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, Keo Ramy, The Press and Quick Reaction Unit spokesman responded, demanding to know how it was possible under the circumstances for the international reserve judge to be vested with the full powers of a co-investigative judge?

Saying the judge’s case was in the same category as candidates who wished to be civil servants: i.e. they had to have official documents of appointment following the appropriate sub-decree and Royal Decree, he addressed both local and international public opinion with the question:

“If he doesn’t have the right legal documents, how can he be considered legitimate?”

The government has thus staked out its position, that without its endorsement, it will continue to ignore anything the Swiss judge does and, moreover, the issue is one that involves national sovereignty.

Moreover, in response to accusations that the government was unwilling to see the conviction of former middle-level KR cadre, the Information Minister, Khieu Kanharith, told the Kampuchea Thmey Daily that if the government had lacked the will, it wouldn’t have proposed the establishment of the tribunal in the first place.

As far as the government was concerned, the timeline for the tribunal’s operation was also open-ended, meaning in other words, there was no date for when the tribunal process would be completed.

The minister added that Cambodia now had four possible options: (1) the tribunal works with UN participation, (2) if the UN wanted to exit the tribunal, Cambodia would propose to UN member countries that they provide the judges for the tribunal, (3) if the above wasn’t possible, the government could invite highly-respected foreign judges to participate, or finally, (4) if none of these options were possible, Cambodia would operate the tribunal alone.

So the line in the sand has been drawn.

However, observers suspect the government is quite happy to see the whole messy process continue unresolved. This way, the Tribunal will still appear to function, despite the fact that Kasper-Ansermet’s putative colleague You Bunleng has already dismissed his staff of Cambodian investigators. This way, if the UN does decide to pull the plug, it will get the blame.

And, as Theary Seng, founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice & Reconciliation, notes in a very eloquent letter in today’s Phnom Penh Post, the UN is in effect a camel (i.e. everything must be decided by committee) and getting it to agree on anything is hugely difficult. As a result, no-one can expect the UN to actually move to wind-up the Tribunal, no matter how dysfunctional it has become.

This is sad because it has abjectly failed to live up to its promise to prosecute those responsible for the darkest chapter in this country’s history, as well as deliver any justice for those that suffered from its policies.

Without apportioning blame, that is the reality.

However, for many if not most Cambodians, the Tribunal is largely irrelevant. They either have more pressing issues to deal with, such as day-to-day survival, or see it as dealing with something very painful that they would prefer not to face. They would rather look to the future rather than look back to the past.

One is therefore forced to ask who will benefit from this ongoing travesty? After wasting one hundred and fifty million dollars to successfully prosecute one perpetrator (the one that pleaded guilty, moreover), we can all guess who this will be.

26^th January 2012

Reuters reports the special expert on U.N. assistance to the Khmer Rouge trials, David Scheffer, saying Cambodia had no authority to block Swiss Laurent Kasper-Ansermet from taking up the post under a 2003 agreement between the government and the United Nations.

You Bunleng and Kasper-Ansermet

“We do look forward to the judge returning to this country from his commitment in Switzerland this week and we look forward to him working on building a credible case files in case 003 and 004,” Scheffer told reporters after meeting government officials. Recognising that we believe in our interpretation of the (2003) agreement, namely regardless of that breach, the judge has full authority to operate as the international investigating judge,” he is quoted as saying.

“Our view is that this particular individual, Judge Kasper-Ansermet, has clear authority to fulfil his duties in this country and we look forward to him doing so,” Scheffer told reporters after meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Sok An yesterday.

However, government spokesman Phay Siphan retorted that the two sides had a “different interpretation” of the agreement and insisted Cambodia had the right not to endorse the Swiss judge.

“We need more discussions to solve this so no one loses face or loses their integrity,” he told the AFP, refusing to say how the stand-off could be resolved.

Scheffer said Kasper-Ansermet “does not need You Bunleng” to carry out investigations, according to the Kampuchea Thmey Daily. Kasper-Ansermet’s Cambodian counterpart You Bunleng, himself a member of the council that refused to endorse the Swiss judge, has publicly refused to work with him so long as he is not legally accredited.

However, it is difficult to see how this dispute can be resolved as there is no provision for arbitration if such a impasse arises.

In a curious footnote, Allen Meyers, husband of Helen Jarvis, long-time confidant of the premier, had a letter published in today’s Phnom Pen Post that excoriates the paper for its reportage of the ongoing controversy. As well as accusing the Post’s journalists of sloppy reporting, Meyers complains that the Supreme Council of the Magistracy was not obliged to “rubber-stamp” the agreement as it “did not cede Cambodian sovereignty to the United Nations” and to claim otherwise “smacks of 19th century colonialist attitudes.”

He then accuses Kasper-Ansermet of evident bias.

Surprisingly, the letter don’t come with the seal of The Press and Quick Reaction Unit.