Political insanity in parade form

So many hours spent out in the field
But so little power to to change do we wield
And those who CAN have other priorities
Leaving those with opinions in the minorities

KEP, CAMBODIA

July 28 - 29, 2008

With Peon No. 2 out in Thailand, and Peon No. 1 having just arrived in Phnom Penh, I decided to enjoy my last weekend of solace and peace out in the field. I was scheduled to go out with Sokun, on Saturday, and figured it would be useful to train our second translator, Sreytal, before Peon 1 arrived.

So, that's how I ended up going out two days straight. Saturday was straightforward; no surprises, nothing out of the ordinary. Sunday was a little different though.

Firstly, Sreytal drives her moto like a maniac. A MANIAC. I was holding on to the bar at the back of the moto the entire time because I thought I was going to die. I didn't though, which is a good thing. Secondly, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) was having a rally.

So, this is really not the best time, safety-wise, to be in Cambodia. The national elections are in three weeks, and although this country claims to be democratic, people will tell you otherwise. In fact, on Monday night, a key member of the opposition was killed. The CPP is the ruling party, and has been ever since the UN government withdrew from Cambodia 12 years ago. I've had conversations about politics with some people here, and most are nervous about telling me what they actually think. The editor of a major newspaper was imprisoned two weeks ago after running an article about the CPP. Few people will tell you what they actually think. One person with whom I've had a conversation said that CPP has stated that if they win the election, that's great, but if they lose, well, it doesn't matter anyway because they control the military. So that's what we're dealing with here.

So, CPP was having a rally. It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life, without exaggeration. Sreytal and I were on our moto and ran into about 50 CPP motos blocking the road and already I was thinking, I should get a picture of this -- it's crazy! We turned the corner and ran into more CPP people. Here's what we saw: CPP motos and cars in a line, getting ready for a procession around the province. It was more than 2 km long -- the line just kept going and going. We finally got to the end of it and a couple of km later we were stopped by police and asked to move off to the side of the road. And that was because the rest of the procession was coming through. Another few km's worth of CPP drove by us. It's nuts. I've never seen such a large procession in my life, and everyone was wearing CPP clothing and had decked out their cars and motos with CPP signs.


I've been told that people get paid to participate in these rallies. Who knows, though. The whole campaigning has been like something out of the movies. As we ride through the villages on any given day, the party offices of the different political party (no village is too small to have several for each party) are throwing propaganda into the airwaves. Megaphones are set up on houses and spew loud speeches 12 hours a day. It sounds so low tech and so Red Party Communist that it's hard to believe that it's real.

And so much money is being spent by the CPP; they are the richest party, being the ones in power. They're spending money on rallies and information sessions, where they give out sarongs and food seasoning packets to villagers to encourage them to vote CPP (voting is mandatory in this country). And the villagers, many of whom are not educated, and most of whom are unaware of what is going on in the big cities like Phnom Penh, just see that CPP is giving them something whereas the other parties are not. Votes are being bought.

And so the question is, where is the UN in all of this? Where are the watchdogs who are supposed to ensure that countries claiming democratic status? Who is overseeing the legitimacy of this election? One person I've spoken to called Cambodian democracy a trick. "The election is not real," he said, "it's a way of tricking the internationals."

It's such an interesting country, really. Behind the politics lies thirty years of civil war. Behind the war lies 3 million dead from the genocide during Pol Pot's regime. And behind all of this is an international community which knows little about Cambodia beyond the tourism of Angkor Wat.

Everyone remembers the Holocaust -- but the Jews are not the only people who have been killed by the masses in history: where are the movies and books and ANGER about the Cambodians, the Chinese, the Albanians, the Tutsis?

This post wasn't intended to get into all that stuff, but I kind of just went off, there. It's important though, to spread the word and let people know about what's going on. It's sad, because that's the only really power I have -- my surveying and my research doesn't do that much; at best it's a band-aid solution and at worst it's a waste of time. I suppose the real value in my being in Cambodia is being able to bring back what I've seen to share with people, to help raise awareness and outrage.

***

The day in the field, other than the ridiculous rally, though, was good. The children, as always, were distracting and amazing.



What I like about Sreytal is that she is proud of her country, and sympathetic to the problems of the poor villagers. She'll pick up the babies with snotty noses and kiss their foreheads. She makes me stop and take pictures of the scenery.


And she makes me eat in local "restaurants" and at people's houses for lunch, so that we can pay them for food and support them with our money, all the while interacting with them.


Sreytal is an amazing translator, and unlike Sokun, seems to really care about what we're doing. Counseling the women after the tetanus survey is wonderful; she's learned a lot from the first few interviews, and can now counsel about maternal health and childhood vaccines as if I were not there. Sadly though, I actually met a woman whose baby died a few weeks after birth. It wasn't able to breastfeed 3 days after birth, and then became colicky and rigid, dying a couple of weeks later. I diagnosed tetanus during the interview.