The Cambodia enigma

Recent news items reveal an interesting, if confusing, picture of Cambodia today. Both happen to have to do with the country's leading aid donor, Japan.

The powerful Japanese business federation Keidanren expressed confidence that Japanese investment in Cambodia would increase if only the country could improve its infrastructure.

On the other hand, on July 29 the Japanese embassy in Phnom Penh announced that it was warning Japanese citizens to take precautions for their physical safety and to avoid going outside after dark.

The announcement was prompted by a robbery the week before in which a Japanese businessman was stabbed and badly injured in his hotel room.

The former Khmer Rouge commander directly responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Western tourists in 1994 is now a lieutenant general in the government army and a celebrity.

In Kuala Lumpur a few days ago, Prince Ranariddh assured the world all is well, cooing about how wonderful relations are between himself and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Will the real Cambodia please stand up?

Ill-starred over the last three decades and more, is Cambodia on the verge of becoming a strategically located link in a regional political and economic network, a greater East Asian co- prosperity sphere, if you will? Or is it teetering on the verge of return to anarchy?

Interestingly, it is a pair of Japanese concepts that can help us understand.

Tatemae means the ostensible situation, the fiction to which everyone pays lip service.

Honne means the real situation, which we see out of the corner of our eye even as we loudly insist that tatemae, the fiction, is real.

Any time the gulf becomes too wide, or whenever an important enough or well-enough situated person speaks too indiscreetly, tatemae breaks down and honne comes into plain view.

Let's be frank: Cambodia's honne is showing, and has been for some time now.

Why is Cambodia perpetually on the brink of anarchy? Why can't foreigners and citizens feel safe in Phnom Penh, even in broad daylight?

Why are Cambodian journalists occasionally assassinated?

Why do the Khmer Rouge persist in battling troops loyal to what we wishfully call the government?

These are big and fraught questions, and because we sense -- out of the corner of our conscious eye -- that the answers are going to subvert the tatemae we cherish, we too often fail to articulate the questions.

But we would do well to do so, if we wish to understand what is coming.

-- The Bangkok Post