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Kith Meng: a tycoon of conscience

Dear Editor,

I am also at unease with very derogatory and explicit words of Kith Meng in an interview “From ATMs to fried chicken” (PPP, Oct. 06, 2008). But I understand Roger Mitton’s intention to maintaining original version articulated by Kith Meng.

In his speech, Kith Meng is understandable as a very aggressive capitalist. He elaborated many aspects instrumental to those who wish to succeed business. Ranging his business from financial marketing to food shop of KFC, Kith Meng might not forget the theory of economic efficiency saying that “it cannot make someone better off without making someone else worse off”. His incremental profit with businesses expanding feasibly narrowed inequity or continue benefiting at the expense of Cambodian poor.

Cambodia’s current economics is experiencing equilibrium inefficiency. There is no balance of supplying (producer) and demanding (purchaser). According to AFP, 35 percent of 14 millions of Cambodian people are living on less than 50 cent US a day. Cambodian officers and teachers are living on their government wage of about 40US per month. This is not included 83 percent Cambodian farmers, the major social stratum of Cambodia are living on daily subsistence life. The power of purchasing is vulnerably incompetent.

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Beware of globalisation

Written by Sophan Seng
Thursday, 09 October 2008

Dear Editor,

It’s just the same song with different melodies. The change of world politics from barbarianism, to colonialism and to contemporary neo-liberal globalism lie on the same latitude: the strong exploit the weak. The change is just moving from explicit exploitation to implicit exploitation.

Civil society has become institutionalised; many rich countries have created their aid agencies to support other poorer countries.

Some aid has strings attached, some does not; but both are for the benefits of the donors primarily.
Aid is good for Cambodia. It is also good for donors because they can earn respect and business profits.
Japan’s aid to build bridges or pave roads is good for Cambodian people to commute easily, and it is also good for Japanese automobile companies to increase their sales of vehicles.

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Buddhism is the basis of the rule of law

Written by Moeun Chhean Nariddh
Tuesday, 07 October 2008

Dear Editor,

As Cambodian people are returning from P’Chum Ben, they might have fulfilled their traditional obligation to appease the ghosts of their ancestors who have been roaming different pagodas in search of food offered by their living relatives during the two-week-long festival.

However, probably very few people apart from the Buddhist monks and lay people have been able to please the gods by fully following the panca-sila, or the Five Precepts, they have repeatedly chanted during the ceremonies.
The panca-sila, or the Five Precepts in Buddhism, include:

1. Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami (I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures).

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New world, new leadership

Written by Vicente Salas
Friday, 03 October 2008
COMMENT

BY VICENTE SALAS

New global challenges call for different leadership styles

8-story-1.jpg

VANDY RATTANA

Voters display evidence of casting their ballots.

“Leaders do not have to be heroes, but they must not be afraid to face reality.”

If globalisation means anything, it means that local events have international consequences.
For better or worse, we are compelled to embrace change and accept that the uncertainties of the global political economy are part and parcel of living in such an interdependent world.

What happens at home doesn’t stay at home. East Asian economies prospered miraculously in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, before disaster struck with the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

No one could have predicted that such a crisis could hit at the epicentre of a major emerging economic bloc.
The result was widespread political instability and a downgrading of human security.
The crisis taught us to be conscious of global uncertainties.

And then came SARS and bird flu-another aspect of globalisation that demonstrated our global vulnerability to disease. Global migration moves much faster today and remains beyond the control of nation-state institutionalism.
Natural disasters have global impacts: the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005, Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008 and the Sichuan earthquake in China 10 days later.

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