The Economist 20161001 ed79b8

28 Asia The Economist October 1st 2016
2 higher minimum wages and generous
price floors for agricultural goods. At one
point in his sister’s tenure, a tonne of rice
brought in as much as 20,000 baht ($625). It
now fetches 8,000 baht, thanks to the fall
in global prices and the removal ofthe government’s
price floor. “If the government
does not pay more, what can we do?” asks
Anong Wannasupring, a farmer.
For all of its waste and corruption, the
Shinawatra style of clientilistic mass politics
helped to spread spending power to
the poorer regions, where local bigwigs
doled out funds disbursed from the central
government. All that has changed under
the junta, which has kept a firmer grip on
the purse-strings.
The National Village Community Fund,
which has allocated 500,000 baht each to
almost 80,000 villages for rural projects, is
now administered by the ministry of interior.
The state’s Special Financial Institutions,
which provide rural credit, are now
regulated by the central bank, having previously
been the playthings of provincial
Cambodian politics
The velvet glove frays
PHNOM PENH
A strongman falls backon old habits
LIKE many old people new to social media,
Hun Sen, Cambodia’s longtime
strongman, has swiftly gone from sceptic
to oversharer. Visitors to his Facebook page
see him not only praying at temples and
gravely shaking hands with world leaders;
he also mugs for selfies with adoring
crowds, plays with his grandchildren and
hacks his way around a golfcourse. Scarcely
a moment of his recent tour of the provinces
went undocumented.
Politicians everywhere use social media
to humanise themselves and connect
directly with voters. Mr Hun Sen faces local
elections next year and a national contest
in 2018. On his recent provincial swing
he pressed flesh, announced local infrastructure
projects as though they were acts
of personal largesse and even freed birds
from captivity—a ritual good deed in local
Buddhist practice. But in case his efforts to
win hearts and minds fall short, he appears
to have a contingency plan: intimidate
the opposition and civil society.
At a meeting of the UN Human Rights
Council this week, Samol Ney, Cambodia’s
ambassador, insisted: “The judiciary
is…an independent institution.” But in
July the Phnom Penh Post published minutes
from a central-committee meeting of
the ruling Cambodian People’s Party
(CPP): it said that, to avoid beingtoppled by
politicians. These days, if you wait for
money from Bangkok, “you’ll wait forever,”
says Mr Suradech.
His complaint is confirmed by a startling
calculation. The World Bank reckons
that over 70% of Thailand’s public expenditure
in 2010 benefited Greater Bangkok,
home to 17% ofthe country’spopulation. In
no othereconomywith a comparable level
of income is government spending as
skewed, say the bank’s economists.
Rather than lift the shopping power of
the rural masses, the junta has aimed to
boost spending by tourists and urbanites.
It has cut taxes markedly for the relatively
few businesses and people that pay them.
It has also succeeded in doubling the number
of visitors from China to 10m a year.
Bangkok’s efforts to claw back fiscal decision-making
may curb clientelism. But
this reconcentration of power may also result
in a reconcentration of prosperity. The
renewed centrality of “one man in Bangkok”,
says Ms Nongpetch, the used-car
dealer, has been bad for business. 7
popular protests, it would have to
“strengthen the state’s equipment of power,
especially the armed forces and the
courts”. The government has brought defamation
suits against an array ofopposition
politicians and activists, including Ny
Chakrya, a human-rights advocate sentenced
on September 22nd to six months’
imprisonment and a hefty fine. In August
An opposition politician’s lot
three employees of an environmental
NGO were convicted, despite the prosecutoradmittingin
court that there was no evidence
to support the charge.
Mr Hun Sen fears a repeat of the election
of 2013, in which the CPP won only a
narrow victory over the Cambodia National
Rescue Party (CNRP), amid an atmosphere
of general discontent. The CNRP alleged
election fraud and declared it would
boycott parliament; violent protests followed,
in which at least four people died.
Unlike other regional strongmen, such
as Prayuth Chan-ocha in Thailand, or the
leaders of Vietnam and Laos, both avowedly
single-party states, international
opinion matters to Mr Hun Sen. Cambodia
relies on foreign aid and NGOs; to keep
funds flowing, he must maintain at least a
veneer of democracy. A genuine opposition
party and a lack of electoral bloodshed
are essential.
The trick is keeping the opposition genuine
but unthreatening. One tactic is to alternate
between conciliation and repression.
The government lured the CNRP’s
president, Sam Rainsy, back from his Parisian
exile in 2013 with swiftly broken
promises of reform. Mr Sam Rainsy returned
to Paris last year, pursued by an arrest
warrant. The party’s second-in-command,
Kem Sokha, has been holed up in its
headquarters since May to avoid appearing
in court in various cases related to his
alleged affair with a hairdresser. On September
9th a court convicted him in absentia
of refusing to appear for questioning,
sentencing him to five months in prison
and a fine of 800,000 riel ($200). He
should have parliamentary immunity, but
the courts say it does not apply, although
CPP officials have ignored summonses to
appear before the tribunal investigating
atrocities under the Khmer Rouge regime
without consequence. Mr Kem Sokha reportedly
plans an appeal; if it is denied, he
will be expelled from parliament.
Since the trial, the government has taken
to staging military exercises near the
CNRP headquarters. The CNRP has threatened
massive demonstrations. In turn, Mr
Hun Sen has vowed to “eliminate” protesters.
One rumour holds that tanks and other
military gear have been redeployed
from the Thai border to Phnom Penh.
In recent days cooler heads have prevailed:
Mr Kem Sokha has urged followers
to avoid “violent, rude or attacking”
speech, and Mr Hun Sen has declared a
temporary “ceasefire” for the Pchum Ben
holiday this week. The CNRP said on September
27th that it would end its boycott of
parliament; the next day representatives of
the two parties met for talks. The CNRP has
a list of demands. The government may
agree to some of them, and may even honour
its word for a few months. But Cambodians
are familiar with this pantomime. It
never ends well for the opposition. 7