Hun Sen's Cambodia

I've wanted to start this book for a while but was too anal to abandon the previous one mid-flow.

I've never cried before whilst reading book reviews on an inside front cover. This may have been fuelled by sleep deprivation but what the reviews conjured up was a deep feeling of indignation and sorrow for what the prevailing situation in Cambodia does to limit the productivity and opportunities of the people of this country.

Cambodia has introduced me much more clearly to the concept of perspective. I know that issues that involve critical analysis at work are often down to differences in the quality of education between colleagues, or even the simple fact that large periods of schooling were missed by many growing up in the 1970s and 80s. I realise that the inability for me and a restaurant worker to understand each other is locked in linguistic, cultural and behavioural differences that are no one's fault. It's clear that the tyrant Hun Sen is a product of warfare, Cold War politics, megalomania, disjunct from reality, sycophancy and greed, but that because of his history he is likely to suffer from some serious mental health issues that mean ridicule and vilification are the wrong ways to respond to him.

I also see that the endemic corruption in this country is a product of severe trauma, suffering and botched restructuring, in which several key nations are complicit but that no person or entity would have had the understanding or power to do much about the course of events since the Khmer Rouge ended, even in retrospect.

All of that leaves me sad for the majority of Cambodian people who through a legacy of inept governance, limited government capacity to provide for its people and rampant misuse of funds over and over again, do not get access to the resources and opportunities, particularly in education, that would benefit them so much.