Jakarta. When Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen
carried out a sweeping reshuffle of his cabinet recently, he actually sent out
two messages, one to his countrymen, the other to the world.
Look, he
was telling his countrymen, I'm going after corruption in the bureaucracy with
a hammer and tongs. For this I'm axing the ministers of agriculture, land
management, rural affairs, transport, commerce, religion and foreign affairs.
Significantly
the ministries of education and environment, led by reputed reformists, were
untouched. Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron has cracked down on sleazy
practices in schools, such as cheating in exams and the jacking up of grades.
He has raised teachers' salaries so they have less reason for bilking pupils.
Reform has a long way to go in the education sector but Naron has made a robust
beginning.
For his
part, Environment Minister Say Samal has done the unthinkable: the transfer of
a large part of his ministry's powers to another ministry. Prime Minister Hun
Sen has acceded to his proposal to shift control of the country's economic land
concessions from the Ministry of Environment to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Samal's ministry can now focus exclusively on conservation and the protection
of what is left of Cambodia's forests.
Meanwhile
a notable reformist, Chea Sophara, has taken over the corruption-riddled land
management ministry. Cambodia today is in a maelstrom of disputes over land
titles involving not only farmers but also members of rich families fighting
over inheritances. Chea Sophara will have his hands full tidying up the mess.
The spur
for reform is obvious: the government painfully needs to recover political
ground lost to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). In the
2013 elections Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party squeaked through to victory
by the skin of its teeth. That was a rude awakening: the people were at the end
of their patience with rife and rampant corruption and a widening gap between
rich and poor.
Hun Sen
must have also felt the people's displeasure with a foreign policy that was too
China-oriented, to the detriment of Cambodia's ties with such powers as the
United States, Japan and the European Union as well as with Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) neighbors.
That's
why Hor Namhong, the country's long-serving foreign minister had to go. It was
he who infamously refused to issue a chairman's statement at the Asean
Ministerial Meeting in Phnom Penh in July 2012 — all because Vietnam and the
Philippines had insisted that the statement should reflect their concerns in
the South China Sea.
Soon
after that debacle I wrote a column comparing that meeting to a situation where
ten foreign ministers sat in a room with two elephants. Nine of the 10 wanted
to comment on the pachyderms but one, the chairman, wouldn't even glance at
them.
One
elephant in the room was the discussion of the foreign ministers on the
standoff over the Scarborough Shoal — which the Philippines wanted reflected in
the paragraph on the South China Sea. Weeks earlier there had been a standoff
between Chinese and Philippine ships near that shoal, which both countries
claim. It's not the standoff that the Philippines wanted mentioned, but the
discussion.
The other
elephant in the room was a reference to exclusive economic zones and
continental shelves, proposed by Vietnam. Earlier, Vietnam had a spat with
China over an area claimed by Vietnam by virtue of the Law of the Sea (Unclos)
and by China by virtue of its nine-dash line.
The
then-Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, supported by his
Singaporean and Malaysian counterparts, tried heroically to cobble a paragraph
that would be acceptable to all, but finally Hor Namhong decided to issue no
statement at all. He argued that these issues, being bilateral, had no place in
an Asean statement — never mind the long-established consensus that bilateral
issues with regional repercussions, like the border dispute between Thailand
and Cambodia itself, could be addressed at the regional level.
According
to historian Donald E. Weatherbee, Chinese diplomats advised Hor Namhong behind
the scenes. All observers deemed the washout a diplomatic coup by China at the
expense of Asean. Prime Minister Hun Sen stoically shared the blame with his
foreign minister.
Valiantly,
then-foreign minister Marty Natalegawa launched a 36-hour shuttle and phone
diplomacy that produced a joint statement on six basic principles —
non-controversial and already long agreed upon — advocating peace in the South
China Sea. But the harm had been done. Asean solidarity suffered a huge dent
that neither Asean, nor Cambodia has been able to live down.
With the
recent departure of Hor Namhong, however, and with the ascendancy of Prak
Sodhon as foreign minister, a new era of a more enlightened diplomacy should
dawn on Cambodia.
Prak
Sodhon's foreign policy views are well known: under his guidance the country is
expected to revert to a strong non-aligned stance. These early, Cambodian
diplomats have borrowed former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa's
pet concept, "dynamic equilibrium," to depict the country's new
foreign policy. This means that Cambodian diplomacy will "rebalance"
so that it strengthens relations with the United States, Japan and the European
Union, while maintaining a stable partnership with China. Since Cambodia isn't
a South China Sea claimant, it will probably adopt Indonesia's neutralist,
pro-Asean inclination.
Everything
about that cabinet reshuffle augurs well for both Cambodia and Asean. Let's
hope that Cambodia will sustain the spirit of reform and political pragmatism
that triggered the shakeout. And that the "rebalancing" of its
foreign policy will endure.
Jamil
Maidan Flores
Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary
writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views
expressed here are his own. He may be contacted at jamilmaidanflores@gmail.com.
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