Political Paradigm of Pragmatism
now browsing by tag
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 30
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 30
This part (30) is a recapping of recommendations advised by the survey research of Asia Foundation for political parties to win the next election. What are the priorities, from the research, that political party could focus on in order to defeat their contender.
-
Corruption: major respondents said vocally on their disappointment on corruption of the public services and government officials. Corruption is counted from court, to school, to public services, health care, and traffic policemen etc.
-
Employment: this is very crucial that major respondents spoke highly on cheap agriculture products, they want to have job in the country with decent wage, and they don’t want to travel to foreign countries to find job.
-
Leadership: the respondents want their local leaders are elected by the people, not nominated by the bureaucrats.
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 30
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 30
This part (30), the author Mr. Sophan Seng didn’t traditionally describe about the policy platform for political parties for the upcoming national election 2017 and 2018 as planned. He is articulating the four outstanding political events in Cambodia.
The Diplomat
1. The government rushed to amend the law on civil society and NGOs (LANGO) without conducting proper consultations and participation from all stakeholders is a trouble for the nation. Parliament and Senate that are well-known for submission to the government or lacking independence, have unanimously approved the law. This LANGO is believed to impeding the independence and effective tasks of civil society that has played important role in democratization and nation-building of Cambodia.
2. The arrests and injail of those 11 political activists of the CNRP is a set-back political development in Cambodia. Hun Sen has no faith in his new political mean on culture of dialogue while Sam Rainsy, his counterpart, has confidently believed the culture of dialogue shall pave strong foundation for collective interests of Cambodia in a long run.
3. The borderline disputes between Cambodia and Vietnam have emerged as the continual conflicts that are poorly responded by the Cambodian government. Cambodian government has conducted self-hostaged border demarcation policy with Vietnam by accusing their own citizens as extreme, ultranationalism, or irrational on Vietnam’s encroachments. These accusations are in contrast with Vietnam who have encouraged their citizens along the borderline to protect their property.
4. International geopolitics changes among those superpower countries is very pressing. Vietnam’s official visit to strengthening tie with Obama administration has enabled Vietnam a boost in strategy to confront with China regarding the rifts of Sprately Island. Other Obama’s friends will approve the concert. Hence, Cambodia has moved closer with China that is believed to repeat past trauma if Cambodia is not managing this triangle relationship properly.
These four political events have heated up Cambodia as a small and fragile state. While the foreign policy requires strength within domestic politics, Hun Sen administration is seems lacking responsive and well-planned domestic policy especially to ensure unity. The amendment of LANGO law and the incarceration of those 11 political activists are showing Hun Sen’s non-visionary sight for Cambodia during this international geopolitics tension.
To bring back confidence and unity, as many believed, those 11 political prisoners must be immediately released, as the author has solemnly appealed for.
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 29
Public Policy and Policy Platform of the Political Parties
This part (29), the author Mr. Sophan Seng renewed his talk regarding the Public Policy and Policy Analysis that are the cornerstone for the Policy Platform Crafting. By exposing the finding from Asia Foundation on their survey to collect political opinions from the Cambodian constituents, the summery of key recommendation for the political parties, are following:
1. Corruption is perceived as the biggest problem facing Cambodia. Including a counter-corruption objective in a political party platform will broadly appeal to the electorate’s desire for change. While individual politicians can increase their popularity by leading highly visible counter-corruption campaigns in the run-up to the next national elections, a greater degree of transparency in the conduct of political parties can counter feelings of distrust of political parties, as the survey findings demonstrated.
2. At the local level, poverty, unemployment, and associated issues are perceived as the biggest problems. Visible commitment at the local level to addressing the root cause of these issues will likely be highly popular.
3. Although vote buying or gift giving may still be an effective strategy for getting out a party’s own supporters, it is clear that in Cambodia it is not effective in changing how voters choose to vote. Parties that wish to attract new voters would be better off spending their resources to develop and publicize programs attractive to the electorate at large.
4. It is clear that the public favors political decentralization, with very large majorities in favor of directly elected officials at all levels. Although political parties would prefer to retain control over the selection of officials, there is a huge potential electoral payoff for any party willing to embrace political and fiscal decentralization.
5. The political parties in Cambodia have failed to differentiate themselves in the public mind, and due to the nature of the electoral system, it is likely that voters associate the parties more with their leaders than with specific programs. Developing a detailed platform that can be distilled into four or five bullet points, to be repeated over and over, will differentiate the parties in the public’s mind. Periodic polling will help determine if their messages are sinking in and to gauge their popularity with the general public. These polls will then allow parties to fine-tune their messages as they prepare for the 2018 elections.
These five bullet-points are wholly derived from the finding. It is imperative to comprehend that these recommendations subsumed from the research don’t mention the border effort to protect from neighboring encroachments. This absence might be caused by:
– The borderline issues are more sensitive issue that shall not build strong foundation for the nation in sustaining development, and it is regarded as more polarized than unified within a nation-state if the state institution is not strong.
– It is possible that the researchers didn’t include questions towards the respondents, or the general opinions are too vague on the issue.
In brief, the key recommendations to the political parties are:
– Crafting robust policy platform to anti-corruption
– Family economy improvements through creating more jobs and increase price of their agriculture products as well as to provide them cheap or free healthcare and seniors salary etc.
– Focus more on robust policy and genuine political will than to encourage vote-buying
– Need more decentralized and delegate administration of the party than to consolidate the central power, or organize candidate elections than conduct direct nomination.
– Parties must prepare well-informed information on their political policy platform than to persuade vague personalities to attract the voters.
At the end, the borderline trigger to maximize nation’s interests is imperative but they must be putting aside the attack on each other.
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 28
This part (28) which is broadcasted by CMN Khmer Radio in July 12-13, 2015, the author Mr. Sophan Seng continued to discuss the Sun Ray Policy Platform phase 3. For this phase, different from phase 1 and phase 2 on lifting up and building up shadow cabinet of the opposition party CNRP respectively, the author talked about the importance of Public Policy, the meaning of it, and its theoretical and practical frameworks to adding towards the meaningful Policy Platform of a political party.
According to Bardach Eugence, a meaningful public policy analysis consists of eight steps:
1. Define the Problem
2. Assemble Some Evidence
3. Construct the Alternatives
4. Select the Criteria
5. Project the Outcomes
6. Confront the Trade-offs
7. Decide
8. Tell Your Story
The author himself had experienced during his schooling for the courses on Public Policy Analysis by joining practicum with the office of Honolulu city mayor. His analysis mainly focused on the Political Participation for the Neighborhood Board policy of the city. While his key criteria were “cost benefits, administrative feasibility, and political 
acceptability” to be used for his study, the concepts of efficiency, equality, political acceptability, and robustness etc. are widely useful for analysts.
Drawing from these contextual frameworks, Cambodia political parties are in need to focus on policy than to focus on leader figures as also claimed by Asia Foundation, in which the author shall discuss in details for the next part of “Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth” program.