By Khmerization
Vox Populi
If you are given the role of an advisor to the Cambodian government, what advice would you give to the Cambodian government to help improve the economy and the living standard of the Cambodian people?
Please write a full length article about your advice or ideas you would hypothetically give to the Cambodian government, including corruption issues, land issues, appointment issues, reforms of judicial system, a culture of impunity such as Chhouk Bandith's case, bureaucracy, police, army, border issues (Preah Vihear dispute and border with Vietnam), trade issues, education issues and reforms, health reforms.
I shall select one or two articles to publish in the main page of Khmerization blog later.
Vox Populi
If you are given the role of an advisor to the Cambodian government, what advice would you give to the Cambodian government to help improve the economy and the living standard of the Cambodian people?
Please write a full length article about your advice or ideas you would hypothetically give to the Cambodian government, including corruption issues, land issues, appointment issues, reforms of judicial system, a culture of impunity such as Chhouk Bandith's case, bureaucracy, police, army, border issues (Preah Vihear dispute and border with Vietnam), trade issues, education issues and reforms, health reforms.
I shall select one or two articles to publish in the main page of Khmerization blog later.
21 comments:
There are true, competent advisors and the huge number of so-called advisors who have never been asked for advices but take regular salary from the state. Those "Excellencies" advisors are real PARASITES of the society.
I thought I should wait to see other comments so that I can steal their ideas to become A Cambodia Government advisor on this blog. OMG, that's cheating and that's is another form corruption.
Here is my role play to be very honest and patriotic advisor to the CG. The first and foremost is the corruption. There is no way to get rid of the chronic thousand years old cancer. It is the second oldest professional in the world behind prostitution. The corruption I talk here doesn't mean just involve weith money, it is involved with all sort of immoral and dignity of provide services. Many corruption don't involve with financial matters but to do with exchanges and kick back, preferential treatment, and families, ect... Well, at the the CG has to be honest and demostrate politically willing to take control to minimize the impact and to drastically decrease the intensity, which Cambodia currently is facing. The rule of thumb is that the top brass have to play the role models, if NOT, then the bucket is still having a big hole. If and only If the corruption can be brought down at least 60% from the current level then everything falls into places.
The tax revenues will go up, the spending on ghost list of public employees and wasteful will be cut. The people will have strong confidence on the government and just name a few benefits.
The Revenues will be surplus then the Government can create programs to help booster the economic, such as spending the surplus to creating jobs and services, when peole have jobs can tend to spend. Watch out for inflation outhere...when the money influx into the market. The government will have to monitor consumer price index clsoely and monthly adjust base on the GNI(GDP) and CPI of domestic spending minus the import price of items adjustment, but that is not the big factor here.
To boost the economic out of recession, the CG needs to end up borrow money to fulfill the domestic consumpton. But in return, The CG needs to invest in restrucutring the taxation codes. The rule of thumb is that whenever the CG can put the hands on , please do it. When the public show strong and trusty confidence of the Government, the privilege of CG can issue the bonds. The money generated from those bonds, can be used to build schools, railways, bridges, and othhers. The tax collection from people who benefit from having jobs created from those services will be paid back to the bond holders in normally 2,3 5 or10 mature dates plus interests. The CG has to watch out the debt ratio with GDP overall preferrably less than 50%.
Another way, to boost the economic, decentralize decision making to fix the need of local community and provinces. Restructuring the Provincial and local government by empowering them to set up the body of legislation on self dependency on generating revenues. The governors and mayors and the body of legislators should have the same role of the Central government to thinking about creating jobs and generatiiong the revenues, they are responsible to issue bonds, tax collection to be use in their own province, paying back debt, and set the goals of running the businesses. The rule of thumb, the provincial Government can't spend more than they generate. they can't borrow money without meaning to pay it back. That's the diffetrence from the Central government. Currently they are waiting the hands out from the central Government.
There are many other mehtods to say the least but not last. The regulation of to protect investment, banking, and stocks are playing the vital role in boosting the economic, including capital gain taxes and dividends ech share holders made. The good sound regulation, which do have room to improve and change, can improve the strong confidence of investors domestically and internationally.
more but stop now..
If I we a bad advisor, I would say to the CG that keep the status quo and do whaterever, you please... and you absolutely right.... just do it.
God bless Cambodian people.
Sorry, I did a lot of typo errors.
such as restructuring, 2.3,5,and 10 years mature date, ect...
As what I thought all along that most of the bloggers here have no clue on how to solve the peoblem !!
They are only good at pointing fingure and blaming others on the issue.
Here are my idea:
1. Cleaning and improving on corruption.
2. Improving education system by increasing teachers salary and hold them accountable for the results.
3. Promoting moral conduct base on Buddhis principle.
4. Promoting Khmere lirature around the region (Khmere Krom, Khmere Surin).
Interesting ideas so far. I shall try to make a contribution here also later when I have time. This idea of giving advice to the Cambodian government is like talking to a brick wall because the present leaders won't listen to what they don't want to hear. Regardless, we must not be deterred and giving ideas is a way of telling them what they have done right and what they have done wrong. I shall come back later.
ADVISOR? It's a stupid issue to be debated.With many hundreds or thousands of "Advisors" the Hun Sen government shows its incompetence and Anarchy.
The main problem that has destroyed the Country is Corruption.
The big corruption is at the TOP LEVEL: Hun Sen, his wife, all his children, including Hun Manet, his brothers and sisters have Fictional shares in all big Companies.
That why a lot of money has been lost due to corruption, especially, tax evasion, tax fraud....
A PP student
By KhmerAngkor 1
With hundreds of “advisors” at his disposal, I don’t think Hun Sen needs any more advisors. However, with what I am going to say below, I don’t think Mr. Hun Sen would want me to be his advisor either.
Having said that, say hypothetically that if I am appointed as a Cambodian government advisor for one day, I shall try my best to advise him of what I think is best.
First, I will attempt to answer all the issues raised in Khmerization’s question one by one.
The Cambodian leaders, especially Prime Minister Hun Sen, must have the political will in carrying out reforms, in particular institutional reforms. Judicial reforms should be among one of the top priorities. In these reforms, the judiciary must be made independent and the make the judiciary independent all the judges must be free of political pressures and influences. And therefore, all the judges must be appointed by the king, not the prime minister or any politicians. Independent judiciary will lead to a reduction in a culture of impunity as independent judges are not under political pressures to convict or exonerate criminals like in the case of Chhouk Bandith, where a deputy PM (Men Sam An) is using her political powers and her patronizing relationship with the PM (Hun Sen), to protect a criminal (Chhouk Bandith).
Other institutional reforms, such as the reforms of the police, army and the bureaucracy must be instigated. Under these reforms, the chiefs of the police and the army must be made neutral through the nomination and appointment by the king. Political reforms shall be extremely important. Cambodia must have only no more than one deputy prime minister. Currently Cambodia has no less than 10 deputy prime ministers. Also in each ministry, there must only be one minister and one deputy minister.
By KhmerAngkor 2
Currently Cambodia has many deputy ministers (secretaries of state and under-secretaries of state) in each ministry. This is a waste of state money, but importantly, it creates an oligarchy and autocracy.
Educational reforms are also a top priority, in particular in regard to decent wages. Paying teachers decent and higher wages will reduce corruption in the classrooms. Currently, many teachers, due to unsustainable wages, have coerced students to attend tuition classes taught by them. This is a form of corruption because those who refused to attended or have no money to attend the tuition classes run by the teachers are penalized in the exam marks. The government must have zero toleration of corruption. Currently, there is a high toleration of corruption as corruption is rampant and chronic, practiced from the highest to the lowest echelon of government. The government must set up educational reform committee to reform, upgrade and improve the curriculum every year.
Health reforms must also be on the top of the government’s priority. I am convinced that if Cambodia can cut corruption significantly, Cambodia is able to provide health care free of charge, or with minimum costs, to poor patients. Rich Cambodians have to pay high taxes and a health levy, or medical charge contribution, to the government in order for the government to use these generous contributions to help the poor. Currently, the poor pay taxes, while rich don’t pay tax, they evade tax or pay very little. To cut corruption within the health system, the authority must be tough with doctors, nurses and hospital administrators who extorted money from patients. At the moment, many doctors and nurses extort money from patients and left them to die if they don’t have the money to pay. In the West, health professionals are taught to observe medical ethics strictly, meaning that patients’ life are more important than anything else- save the patients first. Money is secondary. But in Cambodia, money comes first and they don’t care if patients die.
Corruption reduction
All financial transactions must be done electronically through bank accounts or bank/personal checks so that the authority can trace the origins of the money- avoiding money laundering and embezzlements as well as corruption. Public or civil servants, like teachers, police, army and politicians as well as business transactions such as property sales transactions and trade transactions, must be done through bank transactions. these ways, everything is transparent and teachers, police and the army will never lose their salary as what has happened in the past and now.
The bureaucracy must be substantially reformed. Public and civil servants appointments must be based on qualifications and merits and experiences. All vacancies in the government ministries must be advertised and independent selection committee appointed to oversee the selection process to fill the vacancies. Hun Sen’s “advisors” must be reduced to a reasonable size, say, maybe 20 advisors only. Currently, he has between 500-1000 “advisors”. The reforms of the bureaucracy should involve the cutting down of the number of bureaucrats substantially as well as ghost civil servants.
By KhmerAngkor 3
Border issues
The government must send the troops out from city barracks, such as from Hun Sen’s compound and send them to border areas so as to boost troops on the border to oversee and guards important border points- with Vietnam or Thailand.
The Preah Vihear case
Cambodia should never hold any bilateral talks with Thailand regarding Preah Vihear case while the case is in the hand of the International Court of Justice ICJ). Cambodia should never agree to any re-adjustments of the demilitarized zone as proposed by Thailand and should leave the issue to the ICJ. In term of the Thai insistence of a joint management of Preah Vihear temple, Cambodia must be firm and reject outright this kind of proposal.
Border issues with Vietnam
Cambodia should not make any agreements with Vietnam using the 1985 and 2005 treaties as they are illegal under international laws because they were made when Cambodia was under Vietnam’s occupation. Any agreements and border demarcations with Vietnam must be based on treaties or maps kept at the UN in 1965. The agreements of exchanging lands with Vietnam signed a few days ago are premonitions that Cambodia is on the way to losing large chunks of territory to Vietnam.
Trades with neighbors
Cambodia had suffered huge trade deficits every year for many decades and as such Cambodia should create incentives for foreign investments rather than depends on imports. Currently, Cambodia imports almost everything, from garden vegetable to heavy machinery. To reduce dependencies on imports, Cambodia must impose higher taxes on imports of many products and manufacturing products, such as steel, cement or building material. On the contrary, we should provide incentives such as lower taxes or no tax at all for a certain period of time for those investors who are willing to invest in such manufacturing industries in Cambodia.
Border trades are the same thing. Our neighbors, especially Thailand, had on many occasions, tried to stifle Cambodia’s exports of produce such as corns, cassava, vegetable and rice by implementing its protectionist policies to supports its farmers. However, Cambodia had never retaliated and had allowed Thai produce and products to flow freely to Cambodia without any control. As such, Cambodia suffered huge trade deficits every year.
Land issues
Land titles should be issued to all the people who can prove that they occupied the lands through their ancestral inheritance and provide proper compensation to those evicted. Any companies what failed to observe this policy will have their concessions taken off or withdrawn and/or penalized severely. Currently, the government has a policy of robbing from the poor to give to the rich- evicting people from their lands without proper compensation in order to take these lands to give to the rich. Such policy, not only that it cannot alleviate poverty, but it would speed up the pace of poverty instead.
This advice means nothing to Mr. Hun Sen, but I still it anyway.
May Buddha bless Cambodia.
9:25 AM You are basically repeating things that almost everyone else is saying on this and other forum without any real solution. For example, indiscriminately impose higher taxes on imports from China without domestic products will raise prices for all Khmers especially poor ones. Another one, send troops to borders to Thailand & Vietnam so they get bribes for entrance fee from the Viets. Or they will just go through the Lao route. Thailand would love for Cambodian army to be spread out the the other border so they can attack from this side. Here is an advice for you, keep your day job (if you have one) or welfare check, ok!
Look we seem to be a agree on one thing and that is corruption. To me now-a-day 99% of Khmer living in Khmer have brain washed to think that corruption is a normal form way of live. 1kg = 1000g this is a fact right? right now in Khmer 900g = 1kg. for example if we go and shop for groceries we can most shopper carry their own mini scale (weighing scale). From this fact i can tell you all that to get rid of corruption, we have to wait for 3 or 4 generations from now or else educate kids from the start or if possible to brain washed (re-educate) this generation. to say it inhuman word " Kill all them and bring up a new one" because corruption is part of their live and you can't get rid of it for now.
to me,first government have to create a job for people, second stable salary to all kind of employee, make sure enoeugh salary to cover basic needs. third fired any employees who violence to the law or regular rule of the company or government rule this way could change the behavioral of employee or to make sure that all empoyee do their job. but we have to warn the employee first,second and third warning so we give the chance to change the employee behavior. the behavior i mean in here mean corrubtion, or a fever, this could change when the employer of the government or company who give their regular salary and this salary have to meet the employee basic need. this how we maintain our strong nation.after that every else will follow. to have a strong nation first have to start to change the behavior of our government and their family, second for the riches peopl. for example we have to put the top goverment kids to the jail ot kill them if they are again the law or kill poor without any reason or any things that they do to harm other people life and again the law. and this law also need to praticing with the riches kids to because they think no one can do anything else to them if their parent have money and power. if our government can do this, think every things else will really easy to manage.
You stupid! Why spent a lot of time discussing about a degusting job like ADVISOR? You rally are HUNGRY to be advisor?
In other countries in the world there are advisors, but they keep low profile. They never used their title ADVISOR to do traffic of influence.
Please Stop talking about it. It's degusting!
It's bullshit, ah current khmer government never listen to anyone, stupid.
anyone who wants to be an advisor this government, you have to be a monky communist, murderer, love to fuck the prostitute, love to fuck your own mother and let someone else to fuck your wife, in order to advise ah current monkey government. go to hell ah khmer rouge murderer. Cambodia is still ruled by by the murderers, ah kanchas xihanouk and his family, ah khmer kraham hun xen, heng xamrin, chea xim and many others.
Die soon all ah dictators, khmer kraham and ah royal family.
May lightning strike all ah khmer rouge.
Thank you KhmerAngkor.
You seem like you would make a great advisory to our next leader, once CPP and Hun Sen is removed. You are right on many things, one thing I really do wish is to remove those 500-1000 useless advisers "without an office", from using the nation budget to buy free Lexus, free land title, free tax-paying, free holiday trips, free house cut and the extra $1200 monthly salary, and among other free intensives. If we can reduce to numbers of advisers as you suggested to 20-40 in the current Banana Kingdom, that would save our nation a lot of money from cockroaches and leeches.
Please dont hesitate to share anymore ideas and suggestion with anyone here. Thank you again.
Aus
Dismantle the very counter productive whole strata of government employees and reeducate them from the low level to the very top level. Remember how Chinese cultural revolution has been conducted to eliminate the revisionist!?
Khmer youth should be tasked with the absolute power to eradicate the corrupted officers and confiscate all the plundered resources and wealth which these individuals had committed. No high ranking officer and spouse be allowed to do personal, private business while holding public office. Limit the size of land that an individual can own. The big company that hold larger land have to be incorporated so the land are belonged to the multitude of stock holders but not to a single Oknha. If the Oknha held many shares of stock,he has to pay heavy taxes. The leadership should consist of capable and knowledgeable persons to perform the duty of office. The elected official must have term limit to two consecutive terms.The three branches of governing body must be independent from each other. All appointed officers, judged, governor of institutions must be scrutinized and confirmed by Senate and sworn in before the Monarch. The opposition in the parliament should hold power of anti corruption body. All form of Media outlet must be free and accountable.An independent Media must have supported from the grass root and provide full coverage of political,consumerist and many more issues without biases and fear of any persecutions.The government must establish a friendly relationship toward all neighboring states and reject any overture or coercion from any one of them. No hidden agenda or fervency or animosity toward any particular one of them as well.Use the best recognized international laws, treatises to serve Khmer interest without failure. The immigration law must implement and enact immediately to address the influx of illegal immigrants from Vietnam.Allow the assimilation of any immigrants who show the good faith and conduct to become Cambodian citizenry according to the law. Educate all Khmer and new immigrant kids our Khmer language,culture and Khmer values to the fullest degree so we can build a strong harmonious nation without discrimination and prejudice.We Khmer have to learn to share our wealth our happiness as well as our sorrow.Someone poor health and misfortune is our collective pain and suffering that we all should feel.We should not lay hand and do harm to our countrymen or women.Of course once in a while we fight but remember the honorary dog's way of fighting!!. We should learn from them.The looser dog exposes his belly and softly whining like saying " here I'm the looser you can finish me off!!". The winning dog stand there shows the ferocious fangs and look straight to the looser eyes as saying "now that you know your limit we should stop the fight" then he walks away.
11:09 AM, I thank you for the advice, however, I regret your personal attack. I'm happy to tell you that with 2 jobs, 3 qualifications and studying for a graduate law degree from a prestigious university, I should add a 3rd job very soon. And owning a 3/4 of a million dollars home at a young age, I should never have to depend you welfare as you have suggested. And because of my love for my 2 jobs, I have turned down many offers from Hun Sen's agents. So you can be assured that I won't quit my day jobs!
In regard to my hypothetical advice to the Cambodian government, it is regrettable that you have chosen to launch a personal attack on me rather than writing your critique of my advice, or rather my criticism, of Hun Sen.
Your assertion of a price hike with the imposition of higher taxes is logical if we don't have our own products to compete with the imported products. Regrettably, my assertion is based on cheap foreign-imported products or produce (vegetable etc) which have flooded the Cambodian markets, killing off local producers. The obvious example is the free flow of cheap produce from Vietnam and Thailand such as live pigs, live chickens, lemongrass, lemon/lime, chilli, corns, cabbage, eggplants and even morning glory (trakuon) etc, etc. Now, because of these cheap imports, many Cambodian farmers, gardeners, pig and chicken farmers have gone bankrupt because they can't compete against these cheap produce. If the government can impose higher taxes on these imported produce, it will raise the price of these imported produce to the level of the price of local Cambodian produce or higher and as such our local produce can compete with them on an equal footing. This is a way to protect our farmers against cheap produce from foreign countries. Currently, these cheap produce flow freely to Cambodia through the borders because the corrupt border guards receive bribe from the importers/smugglers who often evade taxes.
In term of steel and cement products, the higher prices won't affect the poor anyway because these products are used to build bridges, casino, hotels, office buildings and so on. If we impose higher taxes for imports of these goods and provide a very good incentives, like lower taxes or no tax for a period of time, for foreign investments in Cambodia, like asking them to set up steel and cement factories Cambodia, they will set up factories in Cambodia rather than importing the products because it is cheaper to produce in Cambodia than importing them from overseas. These ways it provides jobs to Cambodians and revenue to the government in the long run.
When I said we should send troops to the border, I don't mean send them to stop smugglers. I mean send them out of Hun Sen's compound, the city barracks to the battlefields/border areas which needed protections against encroachments from Thailand or Vietnam. Currently, thousands of troops are based in the cities and towns and at Hun Sen's compound to protect his powers. We should send the troops out to the areas which needed protections, such as the border areas. This does not mean less troops on borders. On the contrary, it means more troops on the borders and less troops in the cities and towns and Hun Sen's compound was those troops in the cities did nothing but to protect Hun Sen's power only. Worse, these troops, most of the time, got out of their barracks in the cities to rob people.
I hope you are clear.
Dear readers,
Please focus your comments on the topic of the discussion and please avoid any personal wrangling.
I appreciate everyone's comments, but urge everyone to focus on the topic rather than on personal attacks or criticism. Please remember, any comments containing offensive language that may offend others will be deleted. If you want your voice heard, please be civilised and sensible in your comments. Thank you.
If I were an adviser to the government I would advise the state to stop hiring advisers in order to save revenues. I would then advise the government to fire me.
Everyone have a good expression and nicely detailed about the job titled of an adviser to Mr. Hun Sen/Nal.
Regardless the two of you have the same career or differences. At some point, it was neatly looking excellent.
Our mother-land later on, will depent upon the bright future generation help. Please just keep it mind.
Whatever your thought is..., what I think the samething. But guess what? If I were hired on the spot as an advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen, first this is first, I would ask him to change the regime and delete all the treaties that he had been signed with his big boss "VN" since 1985 via 2005. And then I will persuade him to pick up the right thing that all khmers can be able to live at very comfortable as Paris Peace agreement which is dated on the 23 of October, 1991 .
Well if he does not agree with the point a few of significant pinpoints that I mentioned above so that he fired at the same day right away because he is the only has a power of - hire and fire any way.
Let say if he says yes then I will proceed to such as: the border demarcation, justice, immigration, education, health, industry, and Plus the three branches must be strongly worked as an independent from one to another relatively.
If the answer is said no once again then I will say good bye to him without pay for that day period.
Being a leader the toughest part pf political leadership, however, is knowing when to compromise and when to stand firm on basic of principle, but with this idea the Cambodia as of our nation must have a proper of government with idependently but not a dependent of government. I may think everyone of us in this forum understanding part of my indicating as what the different between (Independent and Dependent of gov.)
Over all about the advisor's job was given by the Khmerization here it was just only part of viewing among khmer patriots. I'm betting to all of you and swearing to god that if you volunteer of get hired by chance they "Cpp" are not going to listen to you unless you have to folowing their foot print from His boss. Do know why? because your idea is really served khmer will but not their boss's interest.
Now-a-day, I don't think person wants to live in a country or society while the rule of law have an imperfect as brutality, bribery, and cronies, etc. That is not a real democracy so that it is tyranny.
Love you all.
MMk
Rapidly written my comment, I did make a whole lot mistake. As an example if you volunteer (or) get hired and many more. I have no time to re correct it.
Sorry.
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