Dictators must hate Facebook. It was so much
easier in the good old days when a dictator controlled TV, newspapers and radio
and could spin whatever lie he liked. (Female dictators are thin on the ground
– a fact that does not reflect well on the gender of which I am a
representative!)
Today it seems that everyone in Cambodia under
the age of 30 has a mobile phone with a camera and is using Facebook not only to
find out what is actually going on in their country but to share audio-visual
information that contradicts what is in the state-controlled media. And of
course these young people have mums and dads (also with mobile phones, if not
Facebook accounts) and so information spreads like wildfire and the truth
becomes harder and harder to suppress.
Dictators do not like the free flow of
information. Especially not if it is true.
Now that a sizeable segment of Cambodia’s
youth knows beyond a shadow of a doubt
that its government engages in industrial scale lying, Hun Sen and his cronies
are rapidly losing the last vestiges of credibility and respect they enjoyed in
the lead up to the elections. And they have lost their capacity to instill fear
in the populace – perhaps the most significant development of the past few
weeks.
Dictators do not like it when the people no
longer fear them. Fear is the glue that holds an efficiently functioning
dictatorship together.
Fear in Cambodia has been replaced with hope and
the one hope that unites most, if not all, Cambodians in August 2013 is that
their country can, at last, make a change for the better. And God knows
Cambodia deserves a lucky break. After decades in which the country was
carpet-bombed by the US during the Vietnam war (an adult and two children were
killed yesterday by a US bomb they stumbled upon), endured the genocidal Khmer
Rouge and 28 years of Hun Sen dictatorship, hope now has a shape, a from and
names attached to it - Sam Rainsy and his Cambodian National Rescue Party.
Today, on the road with Sam Rainsy, his Vice
President Kem Sokha, and other party members, I witnessed dozens of
interactions between Rainsy and Cambodians of all ages in the provinces. In
each he was greeted as a hero and it was clear that the hopes and dreams of so
many people for genuine change rest on his and his party’s shoulders.
Significantly, everyone he spoke with encouraged Rainsy to keep fighting Hun
Sen; to not to allow Hun Sen to get away with stealing yet another election.
From my conversations with Rainsy it is clear that he has no intention of
giving up without the fight of his life. In this he is supported by Vice
President Kem Sokha, the fearless Mu Sochua and other intelligent and seasoned CNRP
politicians who have no intention of allowing Hun Sen to defy the will of the
people yet again.
Hun Sen is no longer a ‘strongman’. He might have
one last tilt at earning the title again but m reading of the situation here
now is that intimidation or violence perpetrated by Hun Sen will have the
reverse effect to the one intended. It will merely further galvanize the
resolve of the Cambodian people to support the one person, the one party, that
represents hope; that represents change – Sam Rainy and the Cambodian National
Rescue party.
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