Matzah Balls and the Cambodian People’s Party
MattLast week, I was an election observer for the Cambodian Commune Council elections, which would probably be equivalent to roughly a city council election, though larger cities have multiple communes. At any rate, I was an observer and spent all of last Sunday tracking down voting fraud and ballot-box stuffing. Ok, so I didn’t see any of that and things (in my part of the world) seemed free and fair. I did get to stand around all day with my baby blue shirt and bright red hat and put on the air of someone far more important than I really was. Watching with a discerning eye from the corner and nodding my head thoughtfully as I doodled on my notepad. In all actuality, it was pretty interesting to see Cambodian democracy at work and things seemed to run quite smoothly. It was a long day though; I got up at 4.30am and was at our starting point by 5.30am and didn’t get home until nearly 6.00pm. I, like most everyone else, was stationed in Phnom Penh and my starting point was the Toul Sleng Museum. This museum, also known as S-21 is the old high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into an interrogation/execution prison. Inmates here were taken to the more infamous Killing Fields outside of town, executed, and interred in mass graves. Anyway, it’s an eerie place during the day, even more so as I stood outside it at 5.30am. It was still dark, but light enough to see the buildings and the rooms where torture and executions took place. I was the first one there that morning and just kinda’ peered over the wall at the museum and thought to myself how far Cambodians have come. 30 years ago, the city of Phnom Penh was emptied of nearly all inhabitants and people were tortured and killed inside the very building I stood in front of. And now, from here I went to a peaceful local election. For the most part, Cambodia has been able to put its past behind it and moved forward. It was good to see a building known as a place of horror and death be turned into a polling station; where people went to chose their leaders, and not be killed by them. I got paired up with an Australian doctor and two translators and we headed off to a nearby school that included several polling stations. The stations officially opened for voters at 7.00am, but we had to be there early to watch all the opening formalities. In addition to the electoral staff, each polling station also had partisan observers from the major political parties who just keep an eye on things. There are a few main parties here in Cambodia, the biggest one being the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) which is the ruling party that evolved from the transitional government put in place by the Vietnamese once they toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) is the main opposition party and the FUNCINPEC and Norodom Rannadinh Party are both parties made up of Royalists. CPP is a populist party with a lot of support, but I am a Sam Rainsy man myself. SRP supporters are often more educated, younger, etc. This can be seen in the party agents who observe the elections. The CPP agents were all older men while SRP agents where all younger, early 20s or so. Anyway, there was a song and dance in the beginning where everyone peered into the ballot box and agreed that it was indeed empty before it was shut and sealed. We all paced around the room making sure it was suitably private and that voters could vote without someone hovering over their shoulders. Slowly, quite a crowd was brewing outside and at 7.00am the party got started. Things were pretty straight forward. You walk in, show your ID card and get a ballot. Go vote, put your ballot in the box, and stick your finger into the indelible ink and be on your way. There was a pretty steady stream of folks throughout the polling stations for a few hours, but it began to drop off by mid-morning. We strolled around to a few other stations and everything seemed to be going pretty well. I think the actual elections were a free process, but it’s the intimidation and pressures in the days/weeks leading up to the elections are what skew things. After a while things began to get really slow, so much so we took a quick coffee break across the road and eventually took an hour lunch break. At some stations, my translator and I sat there for over 30 minutes in between voters, just sweating and cursing ourselves for picking a slow station. I am thankful that my translator was at least an interesting person to talk to, but the Australian’s was like talking to a stump. At one point in the afternoon, a pair of cars pulled up outside with 6 or 8 physically handicapped young women. Some of them could walk well enough to come in on their own, but some were unable. Amongst them, they only had one wheelchair, so while one woman was being pushed in to vote, the others would wait outside. Once one finished, they would be picked up, put back into the car, while another woman was put into the chair and pushed in to vote. It shamed my translator (who wasn’t registered to vote). She said, “I feel bad, I have a body that works and I made up an excuse for not voting. Their problems haven’t stopped them from coming and I admire them.” I will admit, a little tear welled up in my eye. The women looked young enough to be voting for the first time in their lives and nothing was going to stop them. They were smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves. It’s easy for us to make excuses for not voting; “oh, it is only a local election,” “one party is the same as the other,” “its too hot outside.” I feel honored to have seen people, especially those who can’t simply walk up, vote, and walk out, make an effort to cast a vote; people who felt like they were part of something bigger. We take elections for granted; as it is the way it has always been, but these people have known little but hardship and suffering on a scale that we cannot possibly imagine. This morning the paper noted how “only” 65% of registered voters showed up at the polls. It complained about the low turnout since it was only a local election. I thought about writing in and asking if they really wanted to see a low turnout, they should look at American local elections! Anyway, we stayed for the counting process, and in the end, alas, CPP won and won big; something like 95% of the 1000+ communes. The actually voting process was fair, but unfortunately, for now, it’s a one-party democracy.
The night previous to the election was Cambodian Expat Passover and while neither Maggie nor myself are Jewish, we were invited along. It was a big get together, probably 30 folks or so and probably only three of us were not Jewish. There was a fair amount of Hebrew being sung/spoken, but luckily we had our little booklets of English translation, so we could at least follow along. We drank the wine, broke the matzo, ate the bitter herb and it was interesting to be apart of such a ceremony, and I was even given a little skullcap (aka Yarmulke) to wear. I can’t say I understood everything that was going on, but it was good to be exposed to such remarkable things. After the official opening and ceremony, the food brought out was a mixture of traditional Passover food and Russian food (it was being held in a Russian restaurant). I ate and ate until my belly hurt, and would have liked to drink a bit more wine (and vodka!) if I knew I wasn’t getting up at 4.30am the next morning.
Other than that, things have been sloooowwww here on my end. Still no money yet from the Spaniards (patience), which makes it over 3 months of living on borrowed money. It’s the Khmer New Year coming up soon, so folks have started to call in their debts, so looks like its going to be up to me to do some financial wizardry. We’ve gotten a bit of funding from another unnamed donor (Maggie says not to write their name) for some other work, so we find ourselves in a strange situation of having $20,000 in the bank, but theoretically not being able to use it (and thus continue borrowing to cover the cost of shelter operations). Things will hopefully work out sooner rather than later. As meager as my salary may be, I haven’t been paid since December and am looking forward to getting all my back pay soon enough. Once things finally come through, I have $800 coming my way, which may not seem like much to you, but that is a wealth beyond my largest dream here in the village. I’ll be so well off that I’m considering using a bit of it as toilet paper for no other reason than that I can. Other than that, it’s been a bit of hanging out, reading, writing my graduate school essays, and basically just keepin’ it real out here in Svay Rieng. While things have been a bit slow, I have managed to avert a major crisis or two at work. One for example – the project manager (aka: PM) wanted to open a restaurant with his personal money down near the market, so I told him I would go check it out with him and see what I thought. Anyway, it looked like a good building and a relatively good location, here’s a little sample of our conversation:
Matt: “It will cost $4000 to get started and we haven’t been paid in months, where will you get that type of money?”
PM: “I’ll just borrow it from the “unidentified large donor” funding and pay it back with my profits.”
Matt : pursing my lips, looking at the ground and shaking my head silently for a moment. “What if you don’t make a profit?”
PM: “Oh, it will be a very good restaurant; of course I’ll make money!”
Matt: “Humor me a moment, what if you don’t? How will you pay back the money?
PM: “aaaaa….ummmm…eeeeee….I didn’t think about that……oh.”
Crisis averted.
Supposedly, the Peace Corps have arrived in the province, and while none of them are actually in Svay Rieng Town, some of them are not too far away. I want to try to harness some of that-new-to-development-work energy towards some work at my little NGO. They (the volunteers) are all English teachers, and while I can think of things more urgently needed than English teachers, I hope one or two of them is interested in dropping by the shelter every so often to help out.
A few weeks ago we were able to convince Madhavi and Nima to come out to Svay Rieng for a couple days. If you remember from the last entry, Madhavi and Maggie are old high school buddies and Nima is Madhavi’s husband. Anyway, after meeting up with them in Phnom Penh, they came out to the village for a long weekend, and I like to think they had a good time. While there isn’t much to see here in terms of….well, anything, it is a bit of an authentic taste of Cambodia, away from the foreigner-ville of Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. It was also really nice to have some visitors out here, as not surprisingly, we don’t get them often. They biked around, went to the market, and generally just kinda’ hung out for a few days. They’ve had quite trip around the world and Maggie and I are jealous of their adventures, but take heart in the fact that soon enough we’ll be having our own.
Maggie
Yes, all the excitement has me loopy—elections, Passover, frenzied proposal writing and mid-fiscal year reports, assessments, ‘success stories’, ‘best practices’ and realigned budgets…I really could do without April, oh, and tax season too…although I will say the best part of April was the Cambodian-Expat Passover dinner-party and (in March) having Madhavi and Nima in country. You know when you meet someone and instantly you click or feel comfortable or just at ease? Well, that’s how it was with Madhavi and Nima; I hadn’t seen them in 3+years and before that 5+some years, but their warmth and adventurous spirit made it a wonderful time to catch up and learn from each other’s experiences over the last several years. We of course had to fondly remember our overseas experience without the parents, our senior year of high school (thanks to the parents, Karuna and all), but fell back in step as old friends with new adventures. We were thrilled they actually accepted to come to our little Svay Rieng and we’re pretty sure they enjoyed it…tukaluk by the ‘river’, bike rides and Svay Rieng Restaurant…and an upright fan and mosquito net to make up for the flat mattress and chronic electric and plumbing problems in the guest bathroom—it was the highlight of our month! We wish them well on their continued journey around the world; check out their blog link to the right…
Sadly that’s all the news I can muster tonight—I’m afraid the month of April has got me down and instead of turning to cheap DVDs or a nice game of chess/scrabble/crosswords etc…I’m turning to spreadsheets and data that I’m turning into a nice little report. We hope to make it to Bokor Mountain this coming holiday—Khmer New Year in just 1.5 weeks so we will have adventures to share from that trip soon. Keep checkin’ and send us some love! Trashy magazines (i.e. People, In Touch, UsWeekly…) are always welcome!
posted by Life in Cambodia @ 2:24 PM
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