2013 Elections and Social Change
So the elections are finally over. The CPP retained enough seats to form a majority government on its own, though it lost so much ground to the CNRP that some are calling the results a “wake up call” for the CPP [Phnom Penh Post, 2].
All in all, given the (different types of) threats of violence, this may be the best possible outcome. The next 5 years will provide evidence one way or the other. Meanwhile, I expect the nastiness from folks who do literally nothing but complain in private, but scream nastily at everyone they know (and lots of strangers) during election season, to drop off.
Which is part of the problem, actually. Not the absence of nastiness, which is rarely useful, but the absence of real engagement. More than anything else, representational politics encourage disengagement, punctuated by shrieking madness around every election. When political parties seem like the only possible route for change, more substantial and positive ways of improving the world are ignored. I’ve heard that Facebook is ‘the’ place to be for the Cambodian election, but I left Facebook during the last American election, when people who hadn’t done a lick of organizing or work to improve society in four years suddenly started accusing all their friends of being on the wrong side of history. Then, a week afterwards, they were back to watching sitcoms and guzzling diet soda. This version of politics is entertainment. Distraction. Not change.
Outside of political campaign season, few people would say that they feel totally represented by a political candidate. Instead, they agree with some positions, and disagree with others, and still make their choices the best they can. Reasonable.
But during campaign season? It occasionally feels like many identify so closely with their chosen candidate that any criticism is taken as some sort of violent assault. Thus, the many critiques of Sam Rainsy’s (Head of the Cambodian National Rescue Party, or CNRP) anti-Vietnamese rhetoric were met by people who simply denied that such things were happening (perhaps they don’t actually listen to their candidate?), denied that it meant what it meant (perhaps don’t actually understand Khmer?), or most frequently of all, simply began to heap abuse on anyone who disagreed with them. And let’s be clear: the use of the word “Yuon,” while often offensive to Vietnamese, is not really the issue. The issue is blaming an entire ethnic group for degrading and undermining the entire country. And yes – Vietnamese in Cambodia are worried right now.
And violence is really the problem, here. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), led by apparent Prime Minister for Life Hun Sen, is deeply authoritarian, fully corrupt, and trots out the Khmer Rouge to spook the electorate every single election. It’s been his go-to strategy for years, and one he’s made good on in previously hotly-contested campaigns. [1997 Violence]. This year was no different – Hun Sen frequently invoked the specter of Civil War if the CPP lost. Most understood that he was simply threatening violence if he didn’t get his way. After all, it’s been an enormously effective strategy ever since he lost the 1993 elections to Norodom Ranariddh but still managed to hang on to power as co-premier (until 1997, mentioned above). The CPP seems to have no qualms about threatening such violence against the populace (always blamed on the spectral ‘Khmer Rouge,’ as if they remained a fighting force), and openly used the military to campaign on its behalf during the last weeks of the campaign.
But if the violence threatened by the ruling party is backed up by institutionalized military forces aimed at the Cambodian populace as a whole, the violence promoted (not threatened) by Sam Rainsy is of a very different type. It is the violence of nationalist purging, relying on the rhetoric of ‘aliens in the national body’ that should sound familiar to anyone who’s studied the Khmer Rouge period. (I won’t tar the entire CNRP with this brush since I haven’t heard Kem Sokha or Mu Sochua make similarly hateful statements, though I also haven’t heard them stand against it). His constant drumbeat of “Yuon invaders,” the conspiracy theories about massive, organized criminal gangs of Vietnamese destroying the country, and his bizarre threats to retake Koh Tral (the last political party that threatened this was Democratic Kampuchea itself) from the Vietnamese, or the statement that Khmer need to retake Angkor Wat from the “Vietnamese” (nearly identical claims from Hun Sen in 2003 led to the anti-Thai riots) all promote violence against ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia, a group called by Minority Rights Watch “the most vulnerable of Cambodia’s minorities, and the most prone to discrimination and violations of their rights.”
The number of legally resident or citizen Vietnamese in Cambodia is contested, and the rhetoric against ethnic Vietnamese has led directly to the mass murder of ethnic Vietnamese throughout Cambodia’s history. Just the years I can think of off-hand: 1970, 1977, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998. Names like Phum Taches, Ba Chuc, Tuk Meas, Chong Kneas, etc., etc. Professor Ben Kiernan has discussed a “Systematic Policy of Racial Extermination.” during the 70s. Do a search on the Phnom Penh Post’s archives and you’ll find conscientious Khmers attempting to encourage tolerance and thoughtful social policy. You’ll also find article after article reporting “little sympathy for Vietnamese victims,” and reports of murdered babies among those victims.
In 1998, at least four Vietnamese people were murdered by mobs accusing them of poisoning water, food, and rice wine. A United Nations official put it clearly:
“All of these people are ethnic Vietnamese and without a doubt it is related to the political rhetoric,” a senior UN official told AFP, referring to the ongoing opposition rallies protesting the official results of the July elections.” [CD, emphasis mine] See also: [BBC]
In all the cases I’m aware of, the people murdered were among the poorest of the poor, and could hardly have been involved in any massively powerful conspiracy to control the Cambodian government. In other words, these were nationalist pogroms, in which nationalist elites whip up oppressed Khmers to blame their oppression and poverty not on the people actually causing it, but on people even more oppressed and impoverished than themselves. It’s not working great to promote the Khmer nationalist agenda, either (if that means domestic stability, peace, and development), though it clearly works to turn out the votes.
Sociologist Michael Mann has called the type of nationalism promoted by Sam Rainsy and others “Proletarian Nationalism.” This is a type of fascism theorized by Italian Fascist Corradini, that sees itself as economically oppressed, but oppressed via the medium of ethnicity. Thus, the answer to economic oppression (which to be clear, definitely involves some Vietnamese business interests – most of them in Vietnam and involved in illegal resource extraction, smuggling, etc.) is to root out all examples of the ethnic oppressor. As Colonel Chivington of the US Army said of the Native Americans he was massacring “Kill and scalp them all; nits make lice.” The murder of Vietnamese children that is the mark of violent pogroms in Cambodia demonstrates that this logic applies in Cambodia as well. Unless someone thinks that babies are involved in conspiracies somehow.
I’ve been down this road long enough to expect a cascade of angry comments and threatening emails, screaming that I haven’t paid any attention to the history of Vietnamese oppression of Khmer. That stuff is there, though it’s less conspiracy than demography and economics. The Nam tiến Southward movement took over massive amounts of land previously controlled by Khmer kings, the PRK was genuinely controlled by Hanoi in many regards, and Khmer Krom live in conditions today that (while physically often much better than their Khmer counterparts in Cambodia) should be called cultural genocide (forbidden to use their language in public, etc.). But to speak against racism in one context to justify murdering innocents in another is repellent. Or should be. Moreover, pragmatic politics will require that any Cambodian political leader attempt to retain neighborly ties with both Thailand and Vietnam, countries with massively larger populations, economies, and militaries than Cambodia. Meanwhile, the arguments about these issues are framed (by all sides) as if political representation were a convincing argument. One of the least convincing arguments on this front is that former rulers of the Khmer (Kings, French, Independence-Period politicians) ceded territory to the Vietnamese, so that makes it okay.
All in all, this election may be the best result we could hope for. Retaining a majority and able to form a government, Hun Sen and the CPP are unlikely to bring violence to the streets; having made enormous strides in representation in Cambodian government, the CNRP’s supporters may be restrained from attacking ethnic Vietnamese at random. But Cambodia has not even begun to deal with this problem, and those who think that improved democratic procedures lead inexorably to tolerance and harmonious co-existence should read up on what’s been happening with Burma’s Muslim minorities in Myanmar/Burma, especially since Aung San Suu Kyi was released and permitted to join government (instead, rapid democratization in multi-ethnic nationalist situations is one of the predictors, for Michael Mann, of the rise of Fascism and genocide. See here). If you’re paying attention more than once every 4-5 years, it becomes a lot clearer. When the next anti-Vietnamese violence breaks out, people who winked at the rhetoric during the election may be horrified, but they have no excuse for surprise.
Being opposed to violence and oppression ought to mean that you oppose such things wherever they are found, not merely when they happen to you. Buddhism, which promotes an almost notoriously pacifistic ethos (a recent article asks if Buddhist self-defense is even possible), has had a political and nasty political edge as often as any other human institution. In Burma, there are Buddhist monks actively promoting the murder of poor, powerless Muslims, and those who have created refugee camps to protect the Muslims. It is not realistic to identify so closely with an institution that you are incapable of exercising independent thought, and to still expect positive social change. I happen to appreciate most of the CNRP’s domestic policies, and strongly believe that the CPP will never willingly reform any of its corrupt practices. But I’m frankly quite nervous about the willingness of the Khmer electorate (like any nationalist electorate, including especially that of my home country, the United States) to seek out examples of the hated Other on whom to wreak impotent revenge.
Positive change is not led by politicians. It must be led by people organizing between elections, not just during them. The screaming partisans of both sides will largely allow themselves to be diverted to their entertainments and their daily schedules, and ignore the pressing issues facing them (aside from grumbling about this or that to their friends and family) until the next election. As a friend of mine characterizes American elections: “Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me every four years for the last two hundred? Shame on me.”
When politics become as absurd and surreal as they are in Cambodia or the USA today, it’s hardly surprising that more Americans trust parody news shows like the Daily Show with Jon Stewart than ‘real’ television news, or that twitter accounts like Hun Sen’s Eye and Sam Rainsy’s Glasses tend to provide popular and incisive analysis.
As always, I wish Cambodians of whatever ethnicity, religion, or political party peace, happiness, stability, and security. I hope for openness of dialogue and a willingness to separate the issues considered. No one person or party could represent you; if they could, they would be you. So let’s not allow ourselves to pretend. Criticism of those we support can only serve to make them better, unless they respond with unthinking violence. In which case, well – they probably weren’t worth your support to begin with.