Cambodia has seen many changes since France vacated the impoverished Asian nation a half century back, but what has remained unchanged is its endemic corruption. When a peace agreement was singed among different armed and political groups of the country in 1997 in Paris, the people had thought that it was finally time to live in peace and drive out poverty. But their dreams turned sour due to political hostility, widespread corruption, lawlessness and disregard for human rights.
"Once Phnom Penh on the bank of river Tonle Sap was a beautiful city. Now our capital has lost the charm," said a 50-year-old cab diver while taking some tourists from Phnom Penh to a slaughtering field at Pol Pot, 11kms from the capital city. It is the place where over 17,000 people were massacred. Tourists hardly miss this spot despite bad road communication. "None cares about the country's development. Ministers and bureaucrats are eating up all the money," the diver lamented.
Donor agencies like World Bank, ADB, UNDP, USAID and Transparent International have also identified corruption as the main stumbling block to Cambodia's progress and poverty reduction. They were also forced to suspend funding to some important development projects because of widespread corruption. According to information provided by officials, the IMF cancelled amounting 60 million US dollars in the country's timber industry in 1997 prompting the World Bank to decline to renew its budgetary support. Over the three years, the support had mounted to roughly 85 million dollars.
A low-paid government employee at the Immigration office said, "we are trapped in a vicious cycle of corruption. I'm doing this job for the survival of my family." His monthly salary is 30 US dollars but he has to spend about 300 dollars a month. Women account for 52 percent of the country's 11.9 million people. According to a recent UNDP report, Cambodia's GNP is about 3 billion US dollars while GNP per capita annual growth rate is 260 us dollars.
Its Human Development Index (HDI) rank is 136, the sixth poorest country of the world. The average life expectancy in Cambodia is only 50 years. The inflation rate is about 20 percent. But few people are aware of all this because they don't bother about their own currency, Riel. They deal more with the US dollar. Ministers and high officials receive their salaries in dollar. The US dollar has virtually replaced the Riel. Everywhere in the country, from city shopping malls to small rural stores, the dollar is more acceptable than the Riel. "The dollar has not only outweighed our Riel, it also outshines our heritage and culture day by day," commented a schoolteacher.
An NGO leader working against corruption said, the draft was changed 11 times since the 90s for enacting a new law aiming to combat corruption, but the law could not yet be passed. "The lawmakers talk more than taking any concrete action to pass the bill," he said.
"The judiciary is subject to influence by the executive branch and is marred by inefficiency, a lack of training, a shortage of resource and widespread corruption related to low wage," said a US State Department report published in 2001. The report said, "Politically related crimes were rarely prosecuted. Citizens without defense counsel often effectively were denied the right to a fair trial. The ethnic Vietnamese minority continued to face
widespread discrimination by the Khmer majority, and this enmity was exploited by the political opposition."
An official at a leading NGO working for ensuring good governance said, "corruption causes major misallocation of scarce resources. Instead of meeting basic needs such as food, health and education, resources are sometimes used to finance purely prestige projects with no economic value. Corruption is at the root of underdevelopment and poverty."
"Corruption costs Cambodia more than 100 million US dollars. Country's 84 percent people believe that bribery is the normal way of doing things," said a survey report conducted in 1998 by Center for Social Development (CDS), a Phnom Penh-based non-government organisation working against corruption since 1994. It said 79 percent of the people think that the popular and effective way of ending corruption is to raise civil servants' salaries while 57 percent believe that the country needs to formulate a counter-corruption law to eradicate corruption. Twenty-seven percent respondents of the survey were in favour of establishing an anti-corruption commission, 16 percent said government officials need to declare their assets and liabilities, 11 percent laid emphasis on more press freedom, 6 percent stressed publishing government contracts and 5 percent favoured auditing of government departments.
An investor from UK in Cambodia said, the Hun Sen government has lost its popularity for its failure to address the problem of corruption.. The corruption issue will definitely dominate the election campaign as people are now politically more aware than ever before.
A News Network Feature