By Sam Campbell
Asia Times (Hong Kong)
PHNOM PENH - Science fiction author Philip K Dick once explained reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". As sensible as this may sound, it is a definition unlikely to take hold in Cambodia, where recent events have shown the government's tendency to obstinately dismiss anything but the most convenient information.
The denials have come from the highest ranks of government to the lowest rungs of social entertainment and conscripted the judicial system to fend off criticism. Experts and economists say the government backlash risks driving away the vital foreign investment and international aid the country now desperately needs to keep the economy afloat.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both predicted a 0.5% contraction in Cambodia's 2009 gross domestic product (GDP), while the independent Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) estimated an even sharper 3% drop. The government sees things differently and announced last month a beaming 6% GDP growth projection, down only slightly from its 7% projection in April.
That optimistic spin, economists and experts say, is totally out of whack with Cambodia's on-the-ground economic realities, as well as regional and global trends. The crucial garment industry, usually the country's main export engine, saw exports plummet 25% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009. The foreign revenue-generating tourism sector is equally troubled, with air arrivals in the first four months of 2009 down 16% over the same period last year.
The kingdom's rapid economic growth - GDP increases were measured in double digits for several years - seems to have made officials reluctant to concede that the downturn is having serious effects in Cambodia.
Indeed, Prime Minister Hun Sen's economic lieutenants have been slow to acknowledge the impact of the global crisis on Cambodia's until recently rising fortunes, opting instead to discredit or clamp down on critical news and assessments.
Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon said in early June that a US$6.6 million training program and a $1 million micro-loans program would be adequate to mitigate the 60,000 garment factory workers who recently lost their jobs - a claim greeted with skepticism from economic analysts. Keat Chhon did not respond to an Asia Times Online request for an interview about the programs.
Hun Sen has responded to downcast projections with a characteristic sharp tongue. When the EIU this year rated Cambodia among global countries at high risk of political instability due to the economic crisis, the strongman leader questioned the report's "political orientation" and said the experts that compiled it wore "glasses with prescriptions too strong for their eyes".
In an April 6 speech, the premier went further, claiming that the report was "a political attempt to stop the flow of investments". Meanwhile, Cambodia's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Hor Nambora, dismissed the report as based on "sketchy and unconvincing" evidence. In a letter to the EIU, he called the report "perverse" and "insulting".
"Your scare-mongering allegations are highly dangerous, as they could be construed as actively inciting unrest," wrote Hor Nambora, son of Cambodia's veteran Foreign Minister Hor Namhong. "They also happen to be a gross distortion and misrepresentation of Cambodia's true position, and there can be no justification for these claims."
He also upbraided the EIU for having "arrogantly dismissed" Hun Sen's vow that Cambodia would maintain its economic growth this year: "You seem to have ignored this reassurance from the highest possible level, preferring to rely on your own evidence."
Comedic criticism
The government's protestations peaked in early June following a May 30 concert organized by rights organizations to bring attention to the thorny issue of corruption.
At the so-called "Clean Hands Concert", newly appointed United States ambassador Carol Rodley called corruption one of the main obstacles to socio-economic development in the country, claiming the scourge "costs Cambodia up to $500 million per year in terms of forgone state revenue that could otherwise be spent on public services in education and health care and jobs for Cambodian youth".
She claimed that the sum was "equivalent to the cost of constructing 20,000 six-room school buildings or the ability to pay every civil servant in Cambodia an additional US$260 per month". Her arithmetic, however, was not well received by the government.
"The Royal Government of Cambodia absolutely refutes the politically motivated and unsubstantiated allegation made by the United States diplomat in contradiction of the good relations between Cambodia and the United States Government," read a stern letter the Cambodian Foreign Ministry sent to the US Embassy.
Cambodia's UK ambassador Hor Nambora again entered the fray, saying Rodley seemed to have allied herself "with the discredited views of the international pressure group Global Witness which continually engages in virulent and malicious campaigns against the Royal Government of Cambodia". Global Witness has long been an irritating antagonist to Hun Sen's administration, once labeling its leaders as a "kleptocratic elite".
Pointing to a conspiracy to undermine the government is becoming a common theme when responding to critics of the government. The eventual aims of this unnamed group of conspirators - which encompasses such diverse organizations as environmental watchdogs like Global Witness, economic think-tanks such as the EIU and human-rights groups - is unclear.
One conspiracy theory was put forth publicly by Chy Koy, a performer with the popular Koy comedy troupe. Although Koy had performed at the Clean Hands anti-graft concert, he appeared on June 6 on a Cambodian People's Party-owned television station to ridicule anti-corruption NGOs (non-governmental organizations) as money hungry fabricators of non-existent corruption.
"Some NGOs accuse the government of being corrupt without thinking about its achievements," he explained to the local press after the parody. "You can say that the government is corrupt if nothing had developed in our country, but the government is working and everything is developing." Although Cambodia is officially one of the world's least-developed countries, the comedian claimed: "Now we have everything. Some families have two SUVs, some have three."
The Koy performance was followed - again on CPP-controlled TV - on June 13 by the Krem comedy troupe, which portrayed NGOs and journalists as conspiring to stage fake forced evictions - another bete noir of the Cambodian government. The well-documented and sometimes violent evictions of impoverished communities, according to Krem's sketch, are merely an invented tool to enable greedy foreigners to indulge their appetites for luxury hotels and local women.
With official denials and social satire fending off criticism on one front, another battle was playing out in a very different sphere: home decoration.
In what many viewed as one of the most peculiar assaults on free speech so far this year,
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