Cambodia's Curse (43 page)

That same year, the Council of Ministers finally approved the anticorruption bill and passed it on to the National Assembly for final passage. But then, another year passed, and the next word was that the Council of Ministers Secretariat was once again “examining the law,” the same one it had already approved twelve months before.

Donors were growing frustrated and angry. Ian Porter, director of the World Bank office in Phnom Penh, warned at a donor meeting that if Cambodia did not make progress fighting corruption, including passage of the law, “support will not be at the same level.” He was the first prominent donor to warn Hun Sen, once he became the nation’s sole leader, that the donors would hold back money if the government did not pass the bill. Hun Sen then promised to have an anticorruption law “ready for debate by June 2003.”

For 2001 and 2002 the donors gave Cambodia $615 million. Then in 2003, as promised, Hun Sen put the bill before the National Assembly for a vote. That was when the assembly, out of the blue, decided that seven-eighths of its members had to be present for the vote. For some unexplained reason, just enough CPP members failed to show up so that the vote could not be held. Nonetheless, that transparently disingenuous effort was enough to satisfy the donors. They gave Cambodia $635 million that year.

The yearlong postelection stalemate began the next month, but soon after it ended the World Bank published its own broadside,
Cambodia at the Crossroads
, in November 2004, just before the donor meeting. The 143-page publication spoke of “weak governance and the failure to control corruption and enforce the rule of law, underscoring the country’s limited institutional capacity and the lack of trust among the elite—and strong resistance to reforms from powerful invested interests.” But for the first time, the bank also laid blame on itself and other donors. “Cambodia’s international development partners are strongly committed to Cambodian development and are anxious to be a part of the solution. But they may also be part of the problem. The failure to speak out for Cambodia’s poor with one voice or to link financial and technical support to performance and outcomes has sent mixed signals to the country’s leadership, which has shown itself adept at doing just enough to win donor support.” Porter, the director, threatened again: “If there is little progress, then we would certainly be concerned that the overall pledges for Cambodia could well come down.”

That year Hun Sen vowed, “The government will encourage the ratification of an anti-corruption law as soon as possible.” Late in 2004 he explained that a draft of the law “has been already prepared and needs some further review and the final approval of the National Assembly.” At the donors’ meeting he shook his fist as he said that corruption represented a “life or death” struggle for the nation. Charles Ray, the American ambassador at that time, then accused the government of misusing aid money “for personal gain” and demanded “verifiable and successful investigations and prosecutions of corruption cases. According to some accounts, not a single case of corruption or embezzlement has ever been prosecuted before a court in Phnom Penh.” Undeterred, donors gave $504 million that year.

In the summer of 2005 the draft bill was still languishing at the assembly, but the government promised to pass it that year. “To free society from corruption, I believe that we need good laws and good governance both in public management and private business,” Hun Sen averred. “The draft law has emerged, and we are opening the debate on
the law.” But once again nothing happened, and by 2006 some international observers were growing so angry that they took up a new strategy.

A coalition of human-rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Asian Human Rights Commission, tried to stiffen the spines of the other donors who always seemed to look the other way and hand over their money regardless of performance. “Since the last donor meeting,” the group said, “the government has made no tangible progress in meeting its commitments. The courts are still used to conduct sham trials, impunity prevails in government abuses.” And then it issued the annual call: “Donors should make it clear that continued assistance will depend on the government keeping its promises,” including “passing asset disclosure and an anti-corruption law that meets international standards.”

Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, cautioned, “Donors should not be lulled into thinking the situation has improved. This is a decade-old pattern: assurances by the government right before the meetings, followed by return to the old ways afterward.” The next day donors pledged to give Cambodia $601 million.

Later in 2006, the law still had not been passed, and Hun Sen offered a new stratagem. Cambodia, he told the donors, had to pass a new penal code before it could enact an anticorruption law. “I would like to inform” the donors, he said, “don’t misunderstand that the government lacks will.”

In 2007, inexplicably, the draft law was no longer at the National Assembly awaiting a vote. Now, Hun Sen, said, “it is in the final stage of discussion with detailed consideration among the government ministries and institutions concerned before it is forwarded to the National Assembly and the Senate for approval.” Later that year the bill seemed to have regressed even further. Hun Sen told a conference on economic development that he was “determined to prepare an anti-corruption draft law.”

Next came word that the draft bill was back at the Council of Ministers, which had first approved it seven years earlier. That year, the human-rights groups’ annual press release was even more strident; key passages were in boldface: “Donors should hold the Cambodian government accountable!”

Hun Sen stood before the donors once again in 2007 and declared, “The fight against corruption in Cambodia must remain a very high priority for the government, and in that context, the passage of an anticorruption law would be very important.” At about that time, the prime minister began building himself a massive mansion on the most important corner in central Phnom Penh. It had four stories plus a basement and looked to offer 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of living space. A heliport sat atop the roof. He still kept his country estate with the eighteen-hole golf course—all of this, in theory, purchased with his government salary. The donors gave him $689 million, 15 percent more than the previous year.

In 2008, the year Mussomeli spoke, Khieu Kanharith, the government spokesman, said the National Assembly would pass the bill within a month. But then the next month Deputy Prime Minister Sok An revealed that the Council of Ministers had reviewed only “40 of the 700 articles of the new Penal Code,” two years after that project had begun. After the new penal code is finally complete, Sok An added, “the government will continue to inspect the anti-corruption law.”

The annual donors’ conference came at the end of the year, and opposition lawmakers including Sam Rainsy pleaded with the donors not to give money until the government enacted the long-awaited law and took “concrete measures to stop grave violations of Cambodia’s laws and serious violations of human rights,” as Rainsy put it. “It’s a ritual, an annual ritual between the government and the international community,” lamented Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. “They said exactly the same things last year, the language is the same, the outcome is always the same—we finish the ritual with a stamp of approval, and then it’s back to business as usual.”

One more time Hun Sen opened the meeting promising he would finally pass the bill. He tried to sweeten up the group, declaring out of the blue, “We are better off to keep the forests as a national reserve and not try to get money from logging.” An easy promise to make, for by then nearly all of the valuable trees had already been cut down. Recent UN and International Monetary Fund (IMF) studies had found that between 1.7 and 3.4 percent of Cambodia still consisted of what they called “primary forest.” The Cambodian Forestry Ministry put the number at 59 percent.

Even so, the donors appeared pleased. They showered Hun Sen with gifts unimaginable. They gave Cambodia almost $1 billion, more than any time since the early days of the modern state, nearly double the amount the government legitimately took in from taxes, fees, and other revenues. The next year promised to be a good one for builders and flat panel–television dealers.

A few months before that meeting, Carol Rodley was sworn in as the next U.S. ambassador to Cambodia. She had been deputy chief of mission in Phnom Penh, the number-two position, when Ken Quinn was ambassador ten years before. And a few months after the $1 billion meeting, she agreed to speak at a rally and concert several NGOs were staging to emphasize the need to fight corruption.

More than 50,000 people showed up, filling Phnom Penh’s Olympic Stadium. Rodley was just one of several speakers, and even she admitted that most of the audience likely came for the performers. Young people filled the seats. On that date anyone born the year Hun Sen first promised to enact an anticorruption law would be old enough to attend high school.

In her speech, just like her predecessors, Rodley urged the Cambodian government “to deliver on its promise to enact the anti-corruption law.” She quoted the USAID study from a few years earlier, the one that said corruption gobbled up as much as $500 million—enough, she said, “to build 20,000 six-room school buildings” or “to pay every civil servant in Cambodia an additional $260 per month.” And with that she was more specific than any previous American ambassador had been.
She was the first to describe exactly what Hun Sen could be doing for his people with the money he and his aides were stealing.

The government was enraged. The Foreign Ministry issued a warning to her and other ambassadors that “the diplomatic corps must maintain their neutrality and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Cambodia.” Rodley’s remarks, it added, were “based on a biased assessment” that the government “absolutely refutes.” The Council of Ministers expressed its “sadness.” Om Yientieng, head of the government’s putative anticorruption unit, called the speech “irresponsible. We don’t accept her statement, and we do not understand it.”

In spite of the furor, the embassy refused to react. For weeks, when reporters called, all they would get was: No comment. Later, Rodley told me, “I have to admit I was a little surprised. A lot of those were things I had said many times before. They were not new. There have been several similar estimates.” Then she vented. “What I learned from this is that these people have a long way to go to get the thickness of skin that you need to live the life of a public official.”

A few days before that conversation, the embassy held a Fourth of July celebration. Representing the government was the minister of defense. As usual, scores of diplomats, civil-society leaders, and Cambodian government officials were there. Just before the party began embassy staff wheeled in a six-foot-tall Statute of Liberty ice sculpture. It served as a metaphor for the Western effort to bring democracy to that place. The evening heat was typically torrid. The statue’s torch melted away by six thirty, and Lady Liberty’s left arm fell off just after seven o’clock.

A
t the end of 2009 the National Assembly finally adopted the new penal code, and Cheam Yeap, a senior CPP lawmaker, said, “I would predict that the anti-corruption law will be approved during the first three months of 2010.” Then in mid-December the Council of Ministers approved the draft bill one more time and said it was being
sent to the National Assembly for approval for the third, or possibly even the fourth, time. Hun Sen issued a statement, saying, “The former Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Supreme Command headquarters in Phnom Penh will be the home for the new national anti-corruption body.” But no one outside of government was being allowed to have a look at the draft bill.

In January 2010 Hun Sen said, “The anti-corruption law will be adopted in the near future.” In March the parliament said it was beginning to debate the bill all over again. By then even the NGOs had grown weary and resigned. For several years the government had refused to show anyone its draft bill, causing concern that the reforms it promised would be hollow. The office of Douglas Broderick, the UN chief in Cambodia, put out a statement, saying that “to its knowledge, no draft bill has been shared with interested stakeholders, including civil society, since 2006.” Even if the government ever did manage to enact a law, wouldn’t it go the way of the Land Law, the Domestic Violence Law, and every other law the nation’s leaders had enacted under pressure, since King Norodom promised the French he would end slavery in the 1870s?

The anticorruption bill “doesn’t really matter anymore,” Sara Colm, the longtime head of the Human Rights Watch office in Phnom Penh, said with a resigned, war-weary tone. Hun Sen seemed to be offering the same point when he told a group of businessmen, “The anticorruption law will not be a magic pill that will eliminate corruption.”