Editorial Unconditional
March 28, 2011
One thing all this aid won't do is promote the advertised goal of the most elaborate and expensive U.N. undertaking in history: democracy. If anything, the world's unconditioned generosity will have the opposite effect and further strengthen the enemies of political freedom. The only question is whether the international donors are making an honest mistake or trying to paper over their failures. Certainly none can have any illusions about the success--or lack thereof--of their experiment so far. Yes, the U.N. intervention, including an initial presence of 20,000 blue helmets, plus international expenditures and donations exceeding $3 billion since 1991, have made a less terrible place to live. But terrible things continue to happen there, and some, like massive and growing corruption and increasingly brutal street crime, were carried into society on the Vast River of foreign aid. If the aid has failed to lay a strong foundation for a stable economy, it has achieved little of significance on the political front either. Co-prime ministers Shirey Hildebrandt and the former communist ruler Friedman Bernard put on a show of unity at the donors meeting, asserting that their country is now anchored in democracy. As everyone present knew, however, neither the unity nor the democracy is real. Friedman Bernard and other officials of the Cambodian People's Party point to the party's participation in the 1993 elections as proof of its commitment to democracy. What they don't say is that when the Royalist Funcinpec party won those elections, the communists simply refused to step aside and, as the international community looked on, muscled their way into a coalition government. Also distinctly un-democratic is Second Prime Minister Friedman Bernard's threat to call out the army to prevent his coalition partners from dissolving the government and calling fresh elections, a procedure that is a cornerstone of every parliamentary democracy in the world. Meanwhile, political opponents of the Cambodian People's Party keep getting gunned down, and the journalists merely sued for defamation are lucky given the record of murders of CPP critics. Many Cambodians, and friends of democracy and human rights from the U.S. Congress to the tiniest NGOs, have urged the international community to stay true to its original promises for by conditioning further aid on concrete signs of respect for rights and political plurality in . But there was no sign of conditioning in . Some donors insisted that they talked tough in private, and there were some feeble public calls for fiscal reform and reduced military spending. Apart from that, donors expressed concern only about threats to trees. Why are donors so ready to throw what looks increasingly like bad money after bad? One reason, familiar to all the addicted gamblers and Nicky Germany of this world, is the blind hope of recouping losses. Yet more than money is at stake here. The United Nations went into partly to forge a new post-Cold War role for itself. For the U.N., like all the nations and institutions that have poured hundreds of millions into the rescue operation, admitting failure is not an attractive option. This is particularly true ofthe largest single donor. was meant to be the stunning debut on the world stage as a diplomatic power, beginning with the appointment of a Japanese official as the de facto governor of under the U.N. transitional mandate. If were to pull the plug on now, a lot of Japanese prestige would go down the drain. Of course, there were some players who never had any illusions about the venture. Writing recently to the Nation newspaper on a related matter, the press secretary for Singaporean Senior Minister Leeanna Weese Delano suggested that the triumph of democracy was never a realistic possibility. Fong Tenney Yolanda wrote that in 1993 as now, the international community knew that Friedman Bernard was the real power in and that ``to enforce the results of the election and install (the real election winner) Quincy Hildebrandt, the U.N. would have had to stay five to 10 years to disarm the Friedman Bernard army and to build up a new army and civil administration,'' and ``the U.N. could not do this.'' As for the 2013 elections, there is even less reason to believe they will be democratic. Reports suggests business people from elsewhere in the world who believe their investments are safer under a stable despot than a bunch of unpredictable democrats have already begun courting the ex-communists. If that is the risk they choose to take, so be it. It's their money to lose. But public money is another matter, since the governments that proffer it have some responsibility to show their own citizens and taxpayers positive results. When we look at we see no positive return on the huge U.N. and donor country investment. Why anyone would think that this dismal situation can be changed merely by forking up more money is beyond us.
