- Last Updated on 04 February 2013
- By Post Staff
- In commemoration of the late King Father, the Post staff sat down
with some of the relatives and compatriots, journalists and scholars who
best knew Norodom Sihanouk to get their take on the man, the monarch
and the legacy he leaves behind.
Included below are extended interviews with or tributes from:
- Pung Chhiv Kek
- Jacques Bekaert
- Chea Vannath
- Milton Osborne
- Son Soubert
- Elizabeth Becker
- James Gerrand
- Julio Jeldres
- Ang Choulean
- Premjith Sadasivan
- Prince Norodom Ranariddh
Prince Sisowath Thomico meets King Father Norodom Sihanouk at the Royal Palace in 2006. Photograph: James Gerrand
Pung Chhiv Kek
Some international and Cambodian scholars have cast a doubt on King Sihanouk’s legacy, especially due to his connection to the Khmer Rouge after 1970. But in Cambodia, the popular feeling is that the Kingdom was quiet ;peaceful before 1970 and chaotic after. This is still the common;understanding.
People in the countryside were exhilarated by the King’s frequent visits, even to the most remotes places and the poorest families.
Until I left Cambodia to study in France, in 1964, what I experienced was an emerging, dynamic and diverse industry, efficient healthcare, developed with;the assistance of France, which also laid the basis for a reliable education system open to all, with a real independent selection capacity, vocational and academic training, which Prince Sihanouk and my father were keen to preserve and develop.
In addition, the King, who was also a tireless worker with a positive international image, especially among the non-aligned, made a decisive contribution to Cambodia’s independence. He was active in achieving recognition of Preah Vihear Temple’s clear Cambodian legacy by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
At the end of the 1980s, Prince Sihanouk responded with heart to the desire for reconciliation expressed by the Phnom Penh government and Samdech Hun Sen, who were keen to push the country into a new era after the Vietnamese occupation.
Thanks to the cooperation between King Sihanouk, the Royal Family and Samdech Hun Sen, the Cambodian monarchy, the historical and spiritual backbone of the country, is still in a good shape. It’s stable and reliable, ready to play its constitutional role, with King Sihamoni in charge well since 2004.
Finally, I remember the King as very gentle to my daughters, when I happened to visit my parents in Beijing and North Korea, at the very end of April 1975. I was also very moved and grateful to him, when he came along with the Queen, to himself light the fire of my mother’s cremation, in 2001.
Dr Pung Chhiv Kek, is the president of Licadho and a leading human-rights figure in Cambodia.
Jacques Bekaert
In early February 1979, when I first went to the Thai-Cambodian border, I encountered one of the very first groups of Cambodian refugees - mostly women and children. At that time, there was little clear delimitation of the exact location of the border. I walked with them to a small Thai village, where they rested. A kind Thai policeman brought them water and called a Khmer translator from a nearby “open” camp, housing former soldiers of the Lon Nol army who in April 1975 had escaped the Khmer Rouge.
The first question these refugees asked me was: “Where is Papa?”
The translator explained that they were talking about Sihanouk, about Samdech Euv, whom they considered the father of the country and their Supreme Father. While many at the time believed that the key to the anti-Vietnamese coalition would be former republicans like Son Sann, to most Cambodians, Sihanouk was the most important man.
In public, Sihanouk was sometimes his own worst enemy, because of his high-pitched voice, his gestures (he reminded me of many Italians I met, talking with his hands), a style unfamiliar to many Westerners and Asians. In private, of course, he was quieter; he could say things he would refrain from expressing in public. He was sometimes very critical of the United States, although he always insisted to me that he had many American friends. I met (at the time) Prince Sihanouk, whom I would call Monseigneur, in French, numerous times in so many places, (France, Belgium, New York, Thailand, Jakarta, China) and I always went away with the feeling that I had learned something new.
I know that to many people, he had the image of a bon vivant. This was not totally true. Sure he enjoyed good food, and when he offered a banquet for Cambodian or foreign personalities, he made sure the food was good and complemented by the proper wine. But he himself hardly drank at all.
He just went through the motions. During the late years of his life (for the last 15 years I believe), he was also under the constant surveillance of Chinese doctors, so again he would often pretend to eat. I guess he was not the only head of state to act in a similar fashion.
He learned a lot from his years in exile. He told me in private that he made mistakes; that he had at times been unfair to journalists and critics. That he should not have ordered the execution of some enemies.
There was another big difference between the Sihanouk of the ’50s and ’60s and the post-Paris Peace Agreement Sihanouk of the ‘90s. He used to be the real “boss” of Cambodian politics. He was now a constitutional monarch, “kicked upstairs” to limit his political power. This limitation was not always very clear to many Cambodians, especially in the countryside. Some people used to tell me “he should take over, like before, and everything would be okay”. When I replied that the constitution would not authorize such a take over, they looked at me as if I had been talking about the moon.
I first met Prince Sihanouk in 1983 in Mougins, in the south of France. He lived in a small villa that belonged to Cambodia. It was after the victory of Francois Mitterrand in 1981 that he was allowed to come and live in France. The villa Kantha Bopha was small, on a main road, across from a noisy garage. I went to see him several times along with my late wife, Shirley.
Then one day, he sent me a letter telling me that he had managed to sell a villa belonging to his father, and had a little money and would like to invite us for a good lunch. Sihanouk and Princess Monique took us to the local tennis club, where there was a nice restaurant of traditional French cuisine. No stars in the Michelin guide, but very good. The waiter who served us was very young, and it was his first day at the club. He was so impressed by his royal client that he dropped a plate.
Sihanouk immediately got up, prevented the boss of the restaurant from punishing the waiter and said, “Don’t worry. I was also very young when I first became King of Cambodia. And I made many mistakes. But I learned from them, and my friend Jacques here is kind enough to say I was a good king. I would say I was probably the least bad one.”
Everywhere I met Sihanouk, he always made a point to thank everybody, from the motorcyclists of the escort to the waiters and servants.
Yes, we share something in common: music. Sihanouk admired jazz, and told me once that Duke Ellington was a great American. He himself played saxophone and piano. He composed many songs, some of which were very popular. The songswere arranged by professional musicians and sometimes performed by a symphony orchestra.
One of my own compositions, called A Distant Harmony was played several times by Radio UNTAC, and Sihanouk told me he heard it.
In the ’50s, a famous American conductor of light symphonic music, Andre Kostelanetz, arranged several tunes of Sihanouk’s into a suite called the Cambodian Suite. It was released on a record. One day, Sihanouk told me he had lost any copies he had, and was wondering if I knew how to get a recording of that suite.
It happened that I knew Andre Kostelanetz’s nephew and also Andre’s elderly brother, both living in New York. I asked Boris Kostelanetz if he had a copy of this record. He replied
that he lost his, but that maybe the Library of Congress in Washington, DC would have a copy. They did and they sent a tape, which I was glad to give to the King.
Jacques Bekaert is a Belgian-born composer, Southeast Asia correspondent andfriend of Norodom Sihanouk.
Julio Jeldres
His late Majesty was a monarch who worked extremely hard for his people and country. Every document that was submitted to him was read, and often he commented on the same document or gave instructions to ministers or his personal staff. An extremely gentle and polite man, he always expressed his thanks to everybody that worked for him in his Secretariat.
When we arrived for a visit in a foreign country, every person that had been involved during his visits received a small memento from him, including drivers and escort police, who also were personally greeted by His late Majesty.
The late monarch has been characterized as a "bon vivant," often by academics and journalists that did not know him or never met him. This characterisation comes from the fact that he used to offer a glass of champagne to his visitors, but it should not be taken as him drinking bottles of champagne during the day. In fact, as I observed him on many occasions, he played with his champagne glass and consumed very little of the said drink. He was simply trying to make a guest feel welcome in his presence.
He liked good food: Cambodian, French, Chinese and others. When he gave a dinner party or a reception, that dinner had to be well organised, because the image of his beloved Cambodia had to be well-presented to outsiders. Everything he did, whether it was a film (which foreigners never understood) or a dinner party, was part of his promotion of his country. The good name of Cambodia was of paramount importance to him, just as important as the territorial integrity and the unity of Cambodia were.
In politics, he did his best to keep the territorial integrity of Cambodia protected, and to achieve that, he manoeuvred to get the recognition of Cambodia's borders from all sides of the Cold War with much success, which was interrupted by the US-supported coup d’état of 18 March 1970. However, the economic situation of Cambodia was not as successful as His late Majesty had hoped, because of domestic issues and also the continuous war in Vietnam.
When the Khmer Rouge rallied his National United Front of Kampuchea (FUNK) in March 1970 after the coup, Sihanouk believed that he was dealing with moderate elements such as Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and HouYoun.
Only later, Ieng Sary appeared in the picture and Pol Pot did not show up until after Democratic Kampuchea had been declared following the Khmer Rouge military victory. His late
Majesty did not know that the Khmer Rouge were murderous thugs, as they made Khieu Samphan the nominal "visible" leader of Democratic Kampuchea, while Pol Pot remained the ruthless "invisible" leader of Democratic Kampuchea.
Also, it needs to be pointed out that most Western countries, and all of ASEAN, turned against His late Majesty after the 1970 coup, so the only support he received was from communist or non-aligned countries.
Just to show you how His late Majesty never paid any attention to money or making a fortune out of his position, let me tell you an anecdote. In 1984 or 1985, I can’t recall the correct year, I accompanied him to New York for the UN General Assembly.
That day, his protocol chief was away with the Queen Mother, and he decided that we should walk to the UN headquarters not far from his hotel. On the way there, he saw some Christmas cards and he stopped to buy some only to realise, after making his selection, that he did not have any money with him. So I was asked to pay for them, and he reimbursed me later! That was the man Sihanouk was: not interested in money, only in Cambodia.
Julio Jeldres is the former personal secretary and official biographer of the late KingFather.
James Gerrand
The height of the Cold War in the 1950s seemed like poor timing for tiny Cambodia to be defying the might of America US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was exasperated by the audacity of Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s antics in refusing to join the SEATO alliance set up to counter the “red menace” from toppling the dominoes of SE Asia.
“You must choose,” Dulles told Cambodia’s head of state. “You cannot be neutral!”
But Sihanouk was determined to align with the non-aligned nations.
To duck Uncle Sam’s embrace, he made it his business to befriend on the most personal level all the key leaders of the so-called ‘third world’, most significantly, Mao Tse Tung and Zhou Enlai of China, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Indonesia’s President Sukarno, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Kim Il-sung of North Korea.
This was bold defiance for an uppity prince with no real army he could rely on to protect himself, let alone one to defend Cambodia’s borders. On the international stage, Sihanouk was as ingenious and far-sighted as he was a personal charmer without equal.
Who else, for example, would have persuaded Mao and Zhou Enlai - the ultra-revolutionaries of Communist China - to be bestowed with royal decorations from Cambodia’s purple-blooded “God-King”? China would prove to be Sihanouk’s lifelong patron and protector.
In My War with the CIA, the Prince claimed to have been targeted in at least two assassination attempts. But it was the CIA’s involvement in the coup and assassination of America’s anti-Communist ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem, next door in South Vietnam that convinced Sihanouk to cut off US aid as well as diplomatic relations with Washington.
“If that’s what they do to an ally,” said Sihanouk, “what will they do to an neutral?”
In the Western media and diplomatic circles, Sihanouk was commonly depicted as a playboy and clown - more often mocked for his high-pitched voice and giggle than respected for his canny manoeuvring for Cambodia’s long-term survival in the devastating wars of Indochina.
Others added to the perception of Sihanouk as a flibbertigibbet by claiming he turned his back on his growing domestic problems in the 1960s and escaped into the fantasy world of indulging his passion for filmmaking.
But this was a lifelong passion that the late King Father still pursued even during the final years after his “retirement” from political life.
In 2006, when he was 84, the King Father wrote, produced and directed one of his most pointed political satires. Titled Commander of the Royal Order of KohDaung, it focused on the scheming and corruption seething in a fictional “Coconut Island” kingdom
“Not Cambodia. Never Cambodia!” the King Father chuckled over and over just in case anyone might miss the irony.
The film was shot entirely within the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. To play the roles, the King Father had invited an amazing lineup of distinguished VIPs and government officials mainly connected to the Royalist Funcinpec party. No matter what humiliation might have been in store, presumably none would have dared to decline the honour of appearing in one of the revered King Father’s films.
In the lead as a magician was Prince Sisowath Sirirath, son of Sirik Matak, who, with General Lon Nol, had led the “coup” that ousted Sihanouk from power in 1970. That was the crucial turning point that unleashed the 5 years of war and brought Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge to power.
Whatever the King Father might have had in mind, Prince Sirirath - like everyone else - appeared delighted to play along.
In the most telling sequence of all, real-life government officials played the parts of “ministers” in the Coconut Island kingdom. On the table in front of each “minister” was a silver platter stacked with wads of US dollar notes – fakes, as it turned out. These were the necessary bribes being offered to the wife of the Coconut Island ruler as payment for buying a “ministry”.
For a real life Secretary of State like Chea Chan Boribo, for example, or Chap Nhalyvoud, half-brother to Prince Ranariddh and governor of Kampong Speu province, there was no hint of embarrassment in their eagerness to serve and share in His Majesty’s mischievous good humour.
It was here that the King Father laughed aloud and shrieked his disclaimer, ‘Not Cambodia. Never Cambodia!’
Like most of his films, this was open to a puzzling array of possible interpretations.
They have been the subject of several academic studies already, but for political and psychoanalysts, there could be years of work ahead before the enigmas of the King Father’s passions for filmmaking mixed with his original genius for statecraft are ever likely to be unraveled.
Jim Gerrand is an Australian filmmaker who began working in Cambodia as a news cameraman in thelate ’60s and has produced films focusing on Sihanouk’s Cambodia for much of the past 40 years.
Elizabeth Becker
I met with Sihanouk in New York just after he was taken out of Cambodia and brought to the UN. China had demanded that the Khmer Rouge whisk him out before Vietnam sacked Cambodia. So Sihanouk had been under house arrest, and all of the sudden, he’s back on center stage. This is when he was in some ways at his most vulnerable as a leader, and a big turning point.
At that point in time, he invited me to a private dinner with him and his wife at his hotel in New York.
His basic line was always: I am Cambodia; I do what’s best for Cambodia. In actual fact, sometimes this was true, sometimes it wasn’t. One constant, one North Star for Sihanouk was: I do whatever will keep me in power. He always knew which way the wind was blowing.
After the Vietnam invasion, the whole world was at a loss about what was happening in Cambodia.
This is when Sihanouk was at his most contradictory. At the dinner, he would condemn the Khmer Rouge, then say they were the only legitimate government in Cambodia. He just didn’t make any sense.
I’m looking at my notes from that time, and when you would point that out to him, how contradictory he was being, he says: “My life is one of irony; it has not been pleasant.”
Mind you, this is January 15, 1979. This is right after.
Monique, meanwhile, is saying something very different than her husband. She said at one point: “I never want to go back to Cambodia.”
Neither knew how many of their family members had been killed at that point.
Monique was still incredibly beautiful. She had this face that showed so much sorrow and despair. Sihanouk did not appear that way, he was still on centre stage, even at this intimate dinner.
He had invited the journalists who had been in the country during the Khmer Rouge period, so it was a very intimate conversation, the most intimate conversation I have ever had with him. And he was very conflicted.
He blamed Kissinger and Nixon for what befell Cambodia, not the Khmer Rouge – though he did say they were atrocious. He said the Pol Pot government were the worst violators of human rights in the world, but that they were the only legitimate government.
You had a sense that he wasn’t sure where he would go, what direction he would move in. He had no clear policy.
On the one hand, he was very much trying to protect his legacy. He said he would listen to these Khmer Rouge radio broadcasts every night: “I heard them say over the radio that for 2,000 years, the people of Cambodia starved because of Sihanouk and his ancestors… I apologize to the people, but the people did not starve under Sihanouk, and the country was beautiful – very beautiful.”
Monique, meanwhile, would talk about being taken out of the palace to be paraded around the country when the situation for the Khmer Rouge was at its lowest. She talked about how people, women in particular, would run after [Sihanouk] and cry.
Mind you, this was only January 1979. We had no idea yet what the human cost had been during the Khmer Rouge period. This was a really critical dinner.
Later that month, Sihanouk had a nervous breakdown. And after that, he gave up on this idea of a neutral position. He became allies with China and the Khmer Rouge. He realized geopolitics wouldn’t allow a neutral Cambodia.
The next interview I had with him was one year later in Washington DC. I asked him this question, this very journalistic question: What is your biggest nightmare? Because here it is, February 1980, and he’s trying to lead a coalition with China and the Khmer Rouge to topple Vietnam.
Do you know what he says? “Retirement.”
He tells me he has this recurring nightmare where he’s on the Cote d'Azur, walking down the beach, and he recognizes no one - only one person. And that is Bao Dai, Vietnam’s exiled emperor.
His nightmare is not that Vietnam will topple Cambodia or that the coalition will fail or anything related to that. It’s that he will be retired.
At this point, Sihanouk had so convinced himself that he was Cambodia and it was Sihanouk that the one big nightmare was that he is exiled and Cambodia loses its chances for success.
And so then, he’s on the march. He uses his influence to keep the Khmer Rouge on the UN seat, he uses his coalition despite saying he wanted neutrality.
That’s the path he took. As a reporter, that’s one of the moments when I say, “What if he said ‘no, I don’t like your strategy, I’m not going to support it, I’m standing for a neutral solution’ ”? It would have completely changed the calculus, I think. Especially if you believe what the diplomats were saying at this point, which was that Cambodia needs Sihanouk.
That nightmare explained to me why he personally couldn’t make that choice.
And that personally summarized to me what it meant to be Sihanouk. And that’s why Cambodia is what it is today.
I have to say it is completely true about his charisma. I’ve never seen anything like that. In that first interview, he had a row of Cambodian leaders sitting behind him so they could learn from how he interacted with me. This man was brilliant. He could manipulate your emotions and the media. But after my book came out, he wouldn’t speak to me. He was furious. If he didn’t like what came out from a journalist, he’d do a major critique and then just wouldn’t talk to you again.
To have been around him and to have seen the three rows of Cambodian leaders – all from Lon Nol side of war. They had spent time in US, spent years furious at Sihanouk for supporting the Khmer Rouge.
There were 15 men and one woman who were there. And he says to them: “We, the Cambodian refugees, will not join the Khmer Rouge.” And they start clapping.
He says, “I cannot reject the Lon Nol supporters. They are my children. But the Khmer Rouge killed my children.”
And at the same time he’s joining the Khmer Rouge coalition… the confusion he showed all over the place
He publicly condemned the Khmer Rouge and in return was feted his whole life.
There are two sides of Sihanouk. The first, at the dinner, when he was pushing for a neutral state. That’s the Sihanouk I knew – so famous for being an important leader in the nonaligned movement.
I do think there was no question – he wanted Cambodia to become an Austria.
This is neutral territory, go and fight your geopolitical battles somewhere else.
You could see he did want this Austria. But the leaders who supported him refused it; they would not allow it.
He tried to find some way around what was being cooked up, but the Americans did not want to give him refuge – and it became clear the only way to remain a power broker was to side with the Chinese.
He’s an example of a guy who stayed around too long. I think he made some serious mistakes beginning in 1970 and 1975, horrible mistakes. But he still didn’t learn from them. And third strike was still staying with the Khmer Rouge after 1979.
You could have made really strong arguments pro and con about Sihanouk until 1979. He was not a racist; he did have so many progressive ideas about the country and its culture, its art and education… so many things. But by 1979, he really ruined his own legacy. And that’s also, of course, what you see today: a kleptocracy, a single party ruler, Prime Minister Hun Sen and all his titles. … it’s not a good legacy. Would have been a completely different legacy if he said no, if he had not stayed with the Khmer Rouge, that would have changed his legacy.
Because he was critical to ensure the coalition with the Khmer Rouge looked broad-based. If Sihanouk’s behind it, they said, it’s OK.
What was heartbreaking for me was visiting during the week after his death. I loved seeing Cambodians coming to the palace… They were remembering the Sihanouk of the 1960s. Remembering when Cambodia was a community. When people weren’t money grubbing, weren’t stabbing each other in the back. And if he had stopped in 1970, that would be the legacy. That was the memory of Sihanouk that had a lot more good than bad.
Elizabeth Becker is a journalist who has covered Cambodia extensively. She is theauthor of When the War Was Over (1986) and the forthcoming Overbooked: TheExploding Business of Travel and Tourism, which will be released by SimonSchuster in April.
Chea Vannath
The King Father played the role of the cement, not just for the monarchy, but for all Cambodians, from different political tendencies or organisations or religions.
Somehow he was also, at the same time, able to play the role of father. He had a lot of love and compassion and understanding for all of his children, for everybody.
I am 70 years old, which means I grew up in his spiritual guidance. For the procession of the body to the Royal Palace in October, I went to sit on the street to greet him personally. When I was young, in primary school and middle school, we enjoyed standing on the street and waving at him when he returned from his state affairs from abroad. He always loved to stand on the street and wave back at us. Sihanouk was down to earth –he was not in any way untouchable. He was a modern king.
I will go and sit in meditation to convey all the merits for the King Father for him to be whatever he wants to be - may his wish come true. That’s the last gesture that I can do for him, and I feel that I am very fortunate to be born under one of the great Cambodian kings.
I am surprised and also delighted to see this kind of elaborate procession. For me, it is cultural – it is a process for Cambodians to learn more about their culture, to learn more about their tradition. It is once in a lifetime, and it raises the profile of Cambodia as an ancient rich culture. This is the soul and spirit of the Khmer nation.
And also it will be a national documentation for generations to come. What the funeral is bringing back is far more than the actual cost.
Chea Vannath is an independent political analyst and the former head and founder of the Center ofSocial Development, a governance and rights NGO.
Milton Osborne
The death of Norodom Sihanouk, King Father of Cambodia, does not represent the end of an era, since “Sihanouk’s Era” effectively ended in March 1970 when - as chief of state of Cambodia - he was deposed in a coup led by General Lon Nol and Sihanouk’s cousin Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak. While it is true Sihanouk continued to occupy positions of varying importance after 1970—head of the United Front fighting against the regime in Phnom Penh; very briefly president of Democratic Kampuchea after the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975; King again and then King Father—in none of these positions did he exercise the kind of power that characterised his multiple roles between becoming king in 1941 and his overthrow in 1970.
A remarkable and controversial figure by any standard, Sihanouk undoubtedly deserves credit for the fact that Cambodia achieved independence from France with a minimum of conflict in 1953 and for the efforts he made to transform a sleepy kingdom from a French protectorate into a modern Southeast Asian state. Whether the means he used to govern Cambodia deserve the credit some have given him is an issue for debate, but on one thing both his critics and admirers can agree: He always acted in the belief that he had the good of his country and his people at heart. The problem was that he did not believe anyone else could match the wisdom he alone possessed.
Sihanouk’s reign and rule was in great contrast to his 20 th-century forebears, King Sisowath and King Monivong, both of whom (if in different ways) simply acquiesced to the French. In 50 or a hundred years - when historians look back on Sihanouk’s life - they will surely give credit to his activism, if not necessarily to the choices he made.
His son and successor, King Norodom Sihamoni, occupies a very different position from that of his father, most particularly when Sihanouk acted with almost unlimited power in the 1950s and in the early half of the 1960s. A serious and highly cultured man, King Sihamoni is a diligent constitutional monarch who knows the limits of his position and acts carefully with them.
Milton Osborne, a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney, is the author of Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness (1994) and Phnom Penh: A Cultural and Literary History (2008).
Son Soubert
The King Father is a symbol of unity, and, despite all the problems and so on, he has tried to give peace to the people - which is not simple, because there was fighting between factions and so on. He was a divine figure – treated as such in what he wanted to do. It’s for the government to solve [current political problems], because he did not govern. He reigned but did not govern. But, of course, he has a lot of influence and popularity with the people and in the countryside. Even young people today look up to him, since they have known what he has done in his time, and they are surprised he has achieved so much.
With the funeral, I am thankful that the government recognized his popularity and his worthiness, his achievements and all he has done for the country and his reputation in the national arena. So I think they really are giving him justice in some ways. The King himself, when he died, he said he wished not too impose too much spending on the government for his funeral. But this is the Cambodian tradition, because even during the French time, the French made this kind of ceremony for King Sisowath and King Monivong. It’s our tradition.
His Excellency Son Soubert is an advisor to King Norodom Sihamoni and a member of the Constitutional Council. He helped found the Human Rights Party and has been involved in various charity works.
Ang Choulean
I think people will remember Sihanouk for a long time, because a person like him is rare in the history of any country. I am not saying that he is a hero, but for sure, he had huge, enormous, charisma, and he is a personality linked to Cambodia just before and after independence.
It’s like in the past, going back to Angkorian times, like King Suryavarman II, the builder of Angkor Wat, or King Jayavarman VII, the builder of the Bayon temple - I think his name will be like that. You can like him and you can dislike him, but what you can’t deny is his incredible charisma and his imprint he made on Cambodia, since his youth until now. And I would say that the destiny of Cambodia and his destiny have been linked one to another. And you know, he brought the totally unknown Cambodia, a tiny kingdom, into the international arena, thanks to his personality and individuality.
I wonder if I myself will be able to go to Phnom Penh to see the procession, because I fear the size of the crowds. If I judge by what I saw from when the body of the King Father was brought from Beijing, I saw that there was a huge spontaneous moment - very big crowds - and at that time, I think nobody foresaw, nobody could imagine in advance that many.
Dr. Ang Choulean is a scholar of anthropology, ethnology and archaeology who focuses on Cambodian religion and culture. He formerly was the director of the Department of Culture and Monuments at the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of SiemReap.
Premjith Sadasivan
I was preparing to go on vacation leave in Singapore on 15 October 2012 when my phone rang at 6:05am. A Cambodian friend conveyed the sad news that King Father Norodom Sihanouk suffered a heart attack and had passed away in a Beijing hospital a few hours earlier. As a diplomat, I knew an era has passed with the King Father’s passing and I decided to stay put in Cambodia.
The King Father embodied the true spirit of Cambodia. The older generation of Cambodians and Singaporeans remember Sihanouk’s premiership in the1960s as the “golden age” of Cambodia, when Phnom Penh was known as the Pearl of Southeast Asia. In fact, two years after Singapore’s independence in 1965, at the invitation of His Majesty, Singapore’s Founder and then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew visited Cambodia with his family to study its developmental experience. But Cambodia’s “golden age” was soon disrupted by the Cold War. The destiny King Father Sihanouk sought was of a modern, industrialised and independent Cambodia, but larger geopolitical currents, andlater domestic divisions, proved overwhelming.
When Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, accompanied by his wife Madam Ho Ching, visited Phnom Penh to pay his last respects to His Majesty on 21 Oct 2012, he said Singapore will never forget the crucial role His Majesty had played in fostering the enduring friendship between Singapore and Cambodia. Due to His Majesty’s personal friendship with former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Cambodia became one of the first countries to recognise Singapore’s independence. The King Father will be missed by all Cambodians and by many in Singapore. Farewell to King Father Norodom Sihanouk.
His Excellency Premjith Sadasivan is Singapore’s ambassador to Cambodia.
Prince Norodom Ranariddh
My big problem and his problem were how to share our private time with family, while being busy with political life. For he had two kinds of children. He was also father of the nation, father of all Cambodians. The fact is, that while my father very much loved his own children, he loved Cambodia much more.
I’ve been listening to my father’s songs lately. He was a wonderful composer; I love his songs very much. My father used to say to me, “My son Ranariddh sang my songs the best,” because you had to sing it with your own heart. I used to sing a lot. He didn't like to sing his own songs, so I used to do it.
I still cherish what he said on October 30, 2011, in the front of the Royal Palace when the government organized such a big meeting to celebrate his birthday. He advised us that if we want a more prosperous Cambodia, more just, powerful, a continuance of the past, then there is no way out but real cooperation between royalists, represented by the King, and the CPP, represented by Hun Sen. I think this should be his last testament of will, his political testament. They should think twice, two times, three times, again and again about what he said, without which in my humble opinion there won't be any prosperity or strength.
He was father of the nation, father of everything. And no one can replace him any more.
I think he’s the last great king, the last great monarch, and the last father of the nation. These should be the last words.
Prince Norodom Ranariddh is the son of the late King Father and a former prime;minister of Cambodia.
Monday 4 February 2013
Recollections of the King Father Norodom Sihanouk
Saturday 2 February 2013
Cambodia: Education Minister Rails Against Lack Of Funding
By Ben Woods and Chin Chan - February 1, 2013
Education Minister Im Sethy on Wednesday accused the Ministry of Economy and Finance of consistently failing to disburse sufficient funds to the education sector, forcing it to rely heavily on foreign aid to achieve reforms.
Eschewing a prepared speech during an education workshop hosted by
the European Union (E.U.) at the Cambodiana Hotel in Phnom Penh on
Wednesday, Mr. Sethy said the Ministry of Education has received a
smaller proportion of the government’s total budget every year since
2007—funds essential to increasing student enrollment and raising
teachers’ low salaries.
“To be blunt…now the proportion [of education spending] is
decreasing, so the Ministry of Economy and Finance needs to take this
into account,” Mr. Sethy said in a speech to the workshop.
“The Finance Ministry doesn’t know how to make policy at all,” the
minister continued, turning from the crowd and angrily pointing a finger
at Chou Kimleng, undersecretary of state at the Finance Ministry,
who was seated onstage near Mr. Sethy and who had just given the
opening remarks at the workshop.
“As we can see, reform can’t be deadlocked by a deadlocked policy. It needs to be updated and improved,” Mr. Sethy continued.
Using as an example the construction of a new building at the
National Institute of Education, Mr. Sethy said that when the building’s
expense came in over budget, the Finance Ministry refused to give
them more money. He added that four letters he personally sent to the
ministry on the subject went unanswered.
“But I’m thankful to our partner [the E.U.] that helped us because
sometimes Cambodians don’t listen to each other. I’m thankful to our
partner, who stuck with us and saw the issue and resolved it,” Mr. Sethy
said, going on to express his gratitude to the E.U. for spending 36
million euros, or about $48.7 million, on Cambodian education
initiatives to date.
E.U. Ambassador Jean-Francois Cautain—who at the workshop pledged an
additional 37.2 million euros, or about $50.3 million, to Cambodia’s
education sector for 2014 to 2016—said the E.U.’s support for the
education sector should merely supplement, not replace, proper funding
by the government.
“The support we are providing at the E.U. should not substitute a
lack of support by the government…. It should be the other way around,”
Ambassador Cautain said on the sidelines of the workshop.
“It is something we say to the government behind closed doors, but
also in public,” he added. “On that, we are fully aligned with the
minister [of education].”
Mr. Cautain added that while government funding for education has
risen over the past few years, this increase is not proportional to the
growth in total state expenditures.
“What we have seen the last years is that, even if in nominal terms,
the budget for education has increased, the percentage which is
allocated [to] education of the total government budget is decreasing,
so that is a concern for us,” he said.
“Usually, if you look at other countries, a reasonable share would be
around 20 percent of the total budget of the government. I think the
last year, we were around 16 percent, going down from 19, 18” percent in
previous years, he added.
According to official figures, the government allocated about $280
million to education for this year, roughly 9.1 percent of the $3.1
billion total budget. In 2012, funding for education was $245 million,
or about 9.4 percent of the budget.
In contrast, some $400 million has been apportioned to the defense
and security sectors this year, which amounts to about 13 percent of all
spending and a 17.3 percent increase over last year’s allocation, with
$245 million going to the Defense Ministry alone.
But it was not always this way, as Mr. Sethy noted.
In 2007, $132.7 million was set aside for education, about 11.5
percent of that year’s total budget and an increase of 24 percent over
the year before.
Officials at the Finance Ministry declined to comment.
Monday 28 January 2013
UNITED STATES: ‘Bill of rights’ to protect online student interests
The Chronicle of Higher Education26 January 2013 Issue No:256
By Steve Kolowich
A dozen educators met last month in Palo Alto, Calif., to
discuss the future of higher education. They had been convened at the
epicenter of technological innovation in higher education by Sebastian
Thrun, a pioneer of massive open online courses, and yet the task at
hand had nothing to do with software or strategy. It had to do with
citizenship.
The Philadelphia Convention, it was not. But the 12 educators, many
of them well known in online-education circles, did manage to draft a
document that they hope will serve as a philosophical framework for
protecting the interests of students as online education, propelled and
complicated by the rise of MOOCs, hurtles into a new phase.
Called "A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age," the document
proposes a set of "inalienable rights" that the authors say students
and their advocates should demand from institutions and companies that
offer online courses and technology tools.
Those rights should include access and privacy, along with access to
information about the financial models of institutions and companies
offering online courses, write the authors.
Mr. Thrun, the founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, said his involvement in drafting the document does not amount to a pledge or endorsement by his company. And despite the legislative reference in the document's title, the "bill of rights" does not have regulatory teeth.
Still, its authors hope the document will frame the standards and
expectations that guide universities and their constituents as online
tools and platforms become part and parcel of traditional higher
education.
Defining Terms
Online education has been around for decades, but the excitement surrounding MOOCs and the blending of business interests with traditional, mission-driven higher education threatens to obscure educators' obligations to students, said Cathy Davidson, an English professor at Duke University who helped write the document."The problem is, it's been such a short time span and there's so much hype around MOOCs, and some of the terms and agreements around MOOCs are so ill defined and changing and amorphous that no one knows what the business models are" or what rights students have as consumers, Ms. Davidson said.
"The idea is to have a larger conversation about this so that MOOCs don't become the Facebook or Instagram of higher education—where you sign up for some free service and it turns out that you're the product being sold," she said.
The authors of the document express particular concern about the opportunity for online providers to collect and profit from data and content submitted by users. "Students have a right to know how data collected about their participation in the online system will be used by the organization and made available to others," they write. "The provider should offer clear explanations of the privacy implications of students' choices."
Students should also own the intellectual-property rights to any content they create by participating in online courses, the authors add. And online providers that offer the promise of some kind of credential or badge for completing coursework should be able to give students some indication of its "authenticity, meaning, and possible recognition by others."
Reorienting the Conversation
The best-known signatory of the "bill of rights" is also perhaps its most surprising. To the extent that the document regards for-profit purveyors of online education as a potential threat to students' rights, Mr. Thrun would seem to be the subject of the authors' demands, in addition to being an author himself.The Udacity founder said he had no objection to that. He said he wanted to reorient the conversation about MOOCs to focus on pedagogy rather than economics.
"It's time for people to speak up [about] what the pedagogical objective really is, because we are trapped in a world that is excited about the enrollment numbers" primarily, Mr. Thrun said in an interview.
Mr. Thrun, whose company makes money by helping companies recruit students who have opted into Udacity's job-placement program, said he hoped the proposed bill of rights would put pressure on the education-services industry, but also on traditional colleges and universities. When it comes to how they determine prices for online courses and where students' money goes, he said, some institutions are less than forthcoming.
"There's a whole bunch of universities that use online education as a cash cow," said Mr. Thrun. "One of the questions that has arisen is that, if you can actually save money online, can you pass along those savings to the student?"
Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera, another for-profit MOOC provider, said he too was pleased by the idea of articulating and respecting the rights of online students.
"The idea of listing some of the rights we'd like to confer to students is a good one," he said via e-mail. "Fortunately, today's MOOC movement is already led by many of the world's top universities, which are used to serving students and respecting students' rights."
UNITED KINGDOM: PM backs fraud-reducing student application system
David Jobbins26 January 2013 Issue No:256
British prime minister David Cameron has intervened to help a business
management graduate, who has devised an automated application system for
educational agents and international students, to approach the UK
Border Agency (UKBA) at the right level.
Dawood Fard (25) came up with the idea for the system, Centurus One, during a business management masters course at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).
While on a business experience placement working in Delhi, he witnessed the bureaucratic process that international students face when applying to study in the UK.
“The day after I came back from India I got about 20 people together and we thrashed out ideas,” Fard said. “The current process is tedious, slow, inflexible and expensive. We have developed a revolutionary system that is easy to use, transparent and not at all intimidating.
“We can reduce the amount of administrative time from weeks to just minutes, streamlining the management of international recruitment.”
University, college and English language school applicants will be able to use the system to track and process applications for multiple institutions online on a single platform.
The document trail will help prevent abuse of the visa process and should reduce administrative errors, helping genuine students find a place, Fard says.
The impact of tougher visa regulations on recruitment of international students is a matter of huge concern for UK universities.
Institutions using Centurus pay a small fee per student enrolled, with a monthly service fee, and can process as many applications as they wish.
Students and agents pay nothing and can save money through a built-in payment system provided through the Uni-Pay system. Payments processed through Uni-Pay’s network of local banks and credit card platforms give better exchange rates for students and allow institutions to avoid bank commission charges, which currently cost them an estimated £35 million (US$55 million) a year.
During a visit by the prime minister to UCLan, Fard got a commitment from Cameron that he would be able to talk to the appropriate people at UKBA about ways Centurus can help institutions comply with visa processing requirements.
Centurus is only in its infancy but is already in use at several colleges and at Glyndwr University’s London campus, where admissions staff say it has already reduced the number of queries from students about the progress of their applications.
Dawood Fard (25) came up with the idea for the system, Centurus One, during a business management masters course at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).
While on a business experience placement working in Delhi, he witnessed the bureaucratic process that international students face when applying to study in the UK.
“The day after I came back from India I got about 20 people together and we thrashed out ideas,” Fard said. “The current process is tedious, slow, inflexible and expensive. We have developed a revolutionary system that is easy to use, transparent and not at all intimidating.
“We can reduce the amount of administrative time from weeks to just minutes, streamlining the management of international recruitment.”
University, college and English language school applicants will be able to use the system to track and process applications for multiple institutions online on a single platform.
The document trail will help prevent abuse of the visa process and should reduce administrative errors, helping genuine students find a place, Fard says.
The impact of tougher visa regulations on recruitment of international students is a matter of huge concern for UK universities.
Institutions using Centurus pay a small fee per student enrolled, with a monthly service fee, and can process as many applications as they wish.
Students and agents pay nothing and can save money through a built-in payment system provided through the Uni-Pay system. Payments processed through Uni-Pay’s network of local banks and credit card platforms give better exchange rates for students and allow institutions to avoid bank commission charges, which currently cost them an estimated £35 million (US$55 million) a year.
During a visit by the prime minister to UCLan, Fard got a commitment from Cameron that he would be able to talk to the appropriate people at UKBA about ways Centurus can help institutions comply with visa processing requirements.
Centurus is only in its infancy but is already in use at several colleges and at Glyndwr University’s London campus, where admissions staff say it has already reduced the number of queries from students about the progress of their applications.
INDONESIA: Higher education haunted by corruption – Graft watchdog
Ria Nurdiani25 January 2013 Issue No:256
A graft watchdog in Indonesia has sounded a red alert for the education
sector as it recorded some 40 cases of corruption in 2012, causing
losses to the state of around Rp139 billion (US$14.4 million).
Corruption was found at all levels of education, from elementary schools to universities, and from local education agencies to the House of Representatives, said the non-profit Indonesia Corruption Watch, or ICW.
According to the group’s latest report, around a third of the country’s entire education budget was misappropriated during procurement of goods and services.
ICW researcher Febri Hendrik said corruption meant that the country’s operating education budget was well below the stated figures, and the misappropriation could affect education quality.
“It could push the quality of our universities below the required standard. Eventually it would have an effect on the quality of our graduates – they will become unqualified graduates,” Febri told University World News.
A recent high-profile case involved a member of the House of Representative’s budget board. Angelina Sondakh, a former beauty queen and singer turned politician, was found guilty of misdirecting the 2010-11 budget for university projects under the Ministry of Education.
She was sentenced on 10 January to four and a half years in prison, ostensibly for accepting US$3.6 in bribes from a construction company.
In its report published this week, ICW pinpointed five types of corruption: fictitious reporting of events, projects or official trips; price mark-ups; extortion; embezzlement; and misuse of funds.
The biggest losses are caused by price mark-ups, where the difference is pocketed by corrupt officials. It is common practice in Indonesia's education institutions, driven in part by lack of transparency in budgeting processes.
“Whenever there's procurement in a university, then there's the possibility for a price mark-up,” Febri told University World News.
According to Febri, procurement of facilities and infrastructure are the most likely to be subject to corrupt practices.
Sondakh, for example, had been responsible for procurement for 16 universities in the states of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku and Papua with projects worth Rp20 and Rp75 billion.
According to the law, procurement proposals for facilities and infrastructure must be submitted to the Ministry of Education by the university, and the ministry submits it to the House of Representatives, where the budget is approved or rejected.
Haris Iskandar, secretary general of higher education in the Ministry of Education, was quoted by local media as saying some House members had already seen through about 16 procurement proposals, when he had not even received them yet.
One of the proposals approved was for Universitas Cendana in East Nusa Tenggara province, he said. When it was proposed, the budget allocation was Rp15 billion. But after discussion in the House, it rose to Rp70 billion.
Haris was questioned as a witness last October, during Sondakh’s trial.
Linked to the Sondakh case, the Attorney’s Office has also charged at least eight senior officials in four universities: Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Universitas Sriwijaya in South Sumatra, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa in Banten and Universitas Negeri Malang in East Java.
According to the Attorney’s Office, they were involved in laboratory procurement bidding.
The trial of the provost of Universitas Negeri Jakarta started on 15 January. The trial of the head of administration and finance and two lecturers from Universitas Negeri Malang started last November.
Those named at Universitas Sriwijaya and Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa have yet to be brought to trial, with pressure groups such as ICW criticising the delays.
Febri said many graft cases were not handled properly, adding: “It is not clear whether police investigations are completed or not. Even when they are completed, the Attorney’s Office often does not start the trial immediately.”
Corruption was found at all levels of education, from elementary schools to universities, and from local education agencies to the House of Representatives, said the non-profit Indonesia Corruption Watch, or ICW.
According to the group’s latest report, around a third of the country’s entire education budget was misappropriated during procurement of goods and services.
ICW researcher Febri Hendrik said corruption meant that the country’s operating education budget was well below the stated figures, and the misappropriation could affect education quality.
“It could push the quality of our universities below the required standard. Eventually it would have an effect on the quality of our graduates – they will become unqualified graduates,” Febri told University World News.
A recent high-profile case involved a member of the House of Representative’s budget board. Angelina Sondakh, a former beauty queen and singer turned politician, was found guilty of misdirecting the 2010-11 budget for university projects under the Ministry of Education.
She was sentenced on 10 January to four and a half years in prison, ostensibly for accepting US$3.6 in bribes from a construction company.
In its report published this week, ICW pinpointed five types of corruption: fictitious reporting of events, projects or official trips; price mark-ups; extortion; embezzlement; and misuse of funds.
The biggest losses are caused by price mark-ups, where the difference is pocketed by corrupt officials. It is common practice in Indonesia's education institutions, driven in part by lack of transparency in budgeting processes.
“Whenever there's procurement in a university, then there's the possibility for a price mark-up,” Febri told University World News.
According to Febri, procurement of facilities and infrastructure are the most likely to be subject to corrupt practices.
Sondakh, for example, had been responsible for procurement for 16 universities in the states of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku and Papua with projects worth Rp20 and Rp75 billion.
According to the law, procurement proposals for facilities and infrastructure must be submitted to the Ministry of Education by the university, and the ministry submits it to the House of Representatives, where the budget is approved or rejected.
Haris Iskandar, secretary general of higher education in the Ministry of Education, was quoted by local media as saying some House members had already seen through about 16 procurement proposals, when he had not even received them yet.
One of the proposals approved was for Universitas Cendana in East Nusa Tenggara province, he said. When it was proposed, the budget allocation was Rp15 billion. But after discussion in the House, it rose to Rp70 billion.
Haris was questioned as a witness last October, during Sondakh’s trial.
Linked to the Sondakh case, the Attorney’s Office has also charged at least eight senior officials in four universities: Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Universitas Sriwijaya in South Sumatra, Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa in Banten and Universitas Negeri Malang in East Java.
According to the Attorney’s Office, they were involved in laboratory procurement bidding.
The trial of the provost of Universitas Negeri Jakarta started on 15 January. The trial of the head of administration and finance and two lecturers from Universitas Negeri Malang started last November.
Those named at Universitas Sriwijaya and Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa have yet to be brought to trial, with pressure groups such as ICW criticising the delays.
Febri said many graft cases were not handled properly, adding: “It is not clear whether police investigations are completed or not. Even when they are completed, the Attorney’s Office often does not start the trial immediately.”
GLOBAL: Internationalisation has corrupted higher education
Roger Y Chao Jr26 January 2013 Issue No:256
Over the past two decades, neoliberal globalisation has opened up trade
borders, commoditised the higher education sector and established a
global higher education market.
Furthermore, the changing political and economic environment especially after the Cold War resulted in rapid globalisation, technology development and a contraction of borders for trade, labour and academic mobility purposes.
Currently, a global higher education market exists particularly for internationally mobile students and lately for domestic students wishing to take international programmes in their home countries.
This article focuses on the commercialisation of higher education and its role in ushering corruption into higher education.
Corruption in higher education
Corruption in higher education should not only be seen in terms of misuse of research funds, presentation and construction of fraudulent data or inequitable admissions practices.
It should also include micro-level university-related practices in learning, assessment and certification of students and graduates respectively. Grade inflation, sub-standard graduates, and the usage of postgraduate students in teaching and research as free or low-cost assistants form part of the phenomenon of corruption in higher education.
The commercialisation of higher education has made universities into corporations whose primary objective is the profit motive and gaining market share and rankings. This is seen in the design and offering of market-based programmes, practices in assessing and awarding degrees, opening offshore (and domestic) branch campuses, and even offering overseas programmes.
The tensions between universities and key stakeholders – industry, society, governments and students themselves – within an environment of decreasing public sector funding, society’s and industry’s demand for higher education and the rise of a global higher education market, further complicates the matter.
In fact, the demands of the key stakeholders take precedence over traditional university mandates around the betterment of society and the formation of global citizens.
International higher education
The establishment and rapid increase of tuition fees, business enterprise within universities and increased privatisation of higher education show the commercialisation of national higher education systems.
The proliferation of overseas (and even domestic) branch campuses and programmes in (but not limited to) developing nations goes beyond national and regional boundaries, expanding a highly lucrative but increasingly competitive global higher education market across national borders.
What these trends have brought into the higher education sector is an increased competitive environment and the decline of the capacity of universities to function efficiently.
New university standards seem to be characterised by increased student intake, the importance of ranking high on national and global tables, financial sustainability and a short-term focus on meeting industry demands at the expense of quality, relevance and a sense of communal identity and responsibility.
Offshore branch campuses and overseas programmes have followed the money trail to developing nations, charging high tuition fees and granting degrees affiliated to or even awarded by their mother institutions.
Questions about quality, learning, assessment, recognition and awards linger, but the profit motive of offshore branch campuses cannot be denied.
In Hong Kong, degrees from overseas programmes are not recognised (although allowed) by the government, and industry is given the choice to accept or decline recognition. Similarly, local programmes are increasingly offered based on consumer and industry demands.
Short-term demands and contemporary trends dictate university programme offerings based on a profit rationale rather than society’s needs and the long-term skills and competencies required by university graduates to survive and prosper in an ever-changing knowledge-based economy.
These new standards have led to lax admission requirements, a focus on short-term goals and short-term relevance of academic programmes. Furthermore, university practices such as limiting failures have led to grade inflation and the awarding of degrees to sub-standard graduates.
Practices of students assessing lecturers and professors' teaching performance also enhance grade inflation as poor student assessment affects promotion and tenure possibilities. Similarly, university practices of using postgraduate students in teaching, grading, and research worsen the quality of teaching, the students’ learning experience and even the quality of research conducted by these postgraduate students.
In essence, when we disregard the quality of student learning and its outcomes due to the profit motive and the race to the top of the league tables, we have ventured into a new form of corruption in the higher education sector.
Long-term needs
Universities' diminished power and effectiveness is seen in the case of City University of Hong Kong, whose students protested against Hong Kong’s national education plan last September. The students demonstrated just outside the library, an area where silence is a necessity, and even painted the floor of the university with giant white Chinese characters.
In spite of repeated emails and reminders by the university administration, these demonstrations outside the library and other public areas within the university continued for some time and as of 12 January, the giant painted characters are still on the university's floor.
Do we teach students to respect the rights of other people and public property? Or is it no longer the university's role to mould the future leaders of society and give them a sense of responsibility towards local, national and global issues? I am sure a vast number of similar cases can be found not only in Hong Kong, but in other parts of the world as well.
The commercialisation of higher education tends to diminish the role and power of universities to function effectively, given the competitive environment and the demands of the various stakeholders.
Giving in to the pressures and tensions faced by universities, however, leads to corruption in higher education in the sense of not fulfilling the traditional university role of societal betterment, lowering the quality of teaching and learning, and providing sub-standard graduates lacking a sense of responsibility and the necessary long-term skills and competencies to survive and adapt in a rapidly changing knowledge-based society.
It is time to step back and rethink the role and function of contemporary universities and the contribution commercialisation has made to corrupting the higher education sector.
* Roger Y Chao Jr is a PhD candidate in Asian and international studies at City University of Hong Kong, and vice-president of the Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong. His research mostly focuses on regionalism, higher education and internationalisation of higher education.
Furthermore, the changing political and economic environment especially after the Cold War resulted in rapid globalisation, technology development and a contraction of borders for trade, labour and academic mobility purposes.
Currently, a global higher education market exists particularly for internationally mobile students and lately for domestic students wishing to take international programmes in their home countries.
This article focuses on the commercialisation of higher education and its role in ushering corruption into higher education.
Corruption in higher education
Corruption in higher education should not only be seen in terms of misuse of research funds, presentation and construction of fraudulent data or inequitable admissions practices.
It should also include micro-level university-related practices in learning, assessment and certification of students and graduates respectively. Grade inflation, sub-standard graduates, and the usage of postgraduate students in teaching and research as free or low-cost assistants form part of the phenomenon of corruption in higher education.
The commercialisation of higher education has made universities into corporations whose primary objective is the profit motive and gaining market share and rankings. This is seen in the design and offering of market-based programmes, practices in assessing and awarding degrees, opening offshore (and domestic) branch campuses, and even offering overseas programmes.
The tensions between universities and key stakeholders – industry, society, governments and students themselves – within an environment of decreasing public sector funding, society’s and industry’s demand for higher education and the rise of a global higher education market, further complicates the matter.
In fact, the demands of the key stakeholders take precedence over traditional university mandates around the betterment of society and the formation of global citizens.
International higher education
The establishment and rapid increase of tuition fees, business enterprise within universities and increased privatisation of higher education show the commercialisation of national higher education systems.
The proliferation of overseas (and even domestic) branch campuses and programmes in (but not limited to) developing nations goes beyond national and regional boundaries, expanding a highly lucrative but increasingly competitive global higher education market across national borders.
What these trends have brought into the higher education sector is an increased competitive environment and the decline of the capacity of universities to function efficiently.
New university standards seem to be characterised by increased student intake, the importance of ranking high on national and global tables, financial sustainability and a short-term focus on meeting industry demands at the expense of quality, relevance and a sense of communal identity and responsibility.
Offshore branch campuses and overseas programmes have followed the money trail to developing nations, charging high tuition fees and granting degrees affiliated to or even awarded by their mother institutions.
Questions about quality, learning, assessment, recognition and awards linger, but the profit motive of offshore branch campuses cannot be denied.
In Hong Kong, degrees from overseas programmes are not recognised (although allowed) by the government, and industry is given the choice to accept or decline recognition. Similarly, local programmes are increasingly offered based on consumer and industry demands.
Short-term demands and contemporary trends dictate university programme offerings based on a profit rationale rather than society’s needs and the long-term skills and competencies required by university graduates to survive and prosper in an ever-changing knowledge-based economy.
These new standards have led to lax admission requirements, a focus on short-term goals and short-term relevance of academic programmes. Furthermore, university practices such as limiting failures have led to grade inflation and the awarding of degrees to sub-standard graduates.
Practices of students assessing lecturers and professors' teaching performance also enhance grade inflation as poor student assessment affects promotion and tenure possibilities. Similarly, university practices of using postgraduate students in teaching, grading, and research worsen the quality of teaching, the students’ learning experience and even the quality of research conducted by these postgraduate students.
In essence, when we disregard the quality of student learning and its outcomes due to the profit motive and the race to the top of the league tables, we have ventured into a new form of corruption in the higher education sector.
Long-term needs
Universities' diminished power and effectiveness is seen in the case of City University of Hong Kong, whose students protested against Hong Kong’s national education plan last September. The students demonstrated just outside the library, an area where silence is a necessity, and even painted the floor of the university with giant white Chinese characters.
In spite of repeated emails and reminders by the university administration, these demonstrations outside the library and other public areas within the university continued for some time and as of 12 January, the giant painted characters are still on the university's floor.
Do we teach students to respect the rights of other people and public property? Or is it no longer the university's role to mould the future leaders of society and give them a sense of responsibility towards local, national and global issues? I am sure a vast number of similar cases can be found not only in Hong Kong, but in other parts of the world as well.
The commercialisation of higher education tends to diminish the role and power of universities to function effectively, given the competitive environment and the demands of the various stakeholders.
Giving in to the pressures and tensions faced by universities, however, leads to corruption in higher education in the sense of not fulfilling the traditional university role of societal betterment, lowering the quality of teaching and learning, and providing sub-standard graduates lacking a sense of responsibility and the necessary long-term skills and competencies to survive and adapt in a rapidly changing knowledge-based society.
It is time to step back and rethink the role and function of contemporary universities and the contribution commercialisation has made to corrupting the higher education sector.
* Roger Y Chao Jr is a PhD candidate in Asian and international studies at City University of Hong Kong, and vice-president of the Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong. His research mostly focuses on regionalism, higher education and internationalisation of higher education.
ASIA: Better planning and data needed to raise HE quality
Patrick Boehler23 January 2013 Issue No:256
Education professionals from Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand met in Hong Kong from 14-18 January to better understand how to improve the gathering and processing of data for more accurate planning for their education systems up to universities, under a UNESCO programme to promote education policy coordination in Asia.
Citing the need for better planning Aryo Sawung, a director general with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, said: “We have not yet addressed problems beyond increasing the [education] participation rate.”
“Our next step will be to look into more accurate budgeting and how to set quality standards,” said Aryo, who attended the weeklong workshop, which involved almost 85 ministry officials and university researchers from Asia.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is decentralising its education budget to give provincial authorities more responsibility.
It will be more difficult for provinces to deal with their new responsibilities and make budgetary predictions with data that the central government has not gathered before, said Aip Badrujaman from the faculty of education at the State University of Jakarta.
According to participants, accurate projections into the future needs of their education systems are difficult, and education quality in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam has suffered because of inadequate data on demographic changes – especially as birth rates are slowing.
Against this changing backdrop, “We need to find ways to address two [education planning] problems: budget and the training of educators,” said Charoen Puwijit, a Thai Ministry of Education official.
“Education, especially higher education, is expanding in all three countries, possibly over-expanding. In South East Asia, the focus is on how to raise the quality of education,” said Mark Bray, a professor at Hong Kong University who organised the workshop.
The education picture in these countries had become more “fluid” than in the past. Education policy planners needed to consider a more complex picture, including cross-border migration as well as declining birth rates, Bray told University World News.
“The three countries have universal secondary education, which has increased demand for tertiary education,” he said. For education administrators, the challenge was also to deal with cross-border flows of students and manage new ways of teaching, such as distance learning.
While the most pressing challenges lie in primary and secondary education, reforms were necessary to guarantee a healthier development of the tertiary sector. “The base of the house needs to be kept standing, otherwise the roof, higher education, will fall,” Bray said.
Gabriele Göttelmann-Duret, head of the education and training unit at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, said problems were faced by many developing countries:
“On the one hand, we have more and more professionals working in the education sector. On the other, we are seeing increasing decentralisation in policy-making.”
The education sector planning workshop was the third of its kind organised by UNESCO. Earlier sessions, in 2008 and 2010, took education administrators from Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to Paris.
Citing the need for better planning Aryo Sawung, a director general with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, said: “We have not yet addressed problems beyond increasing the [education] participation rate.”
“Our next step will be to look into more accurate budgeting and how to set quality standards,” said Aryo, who attended the weeklong workshop, which involved almost 85 ministry officials and university researchers from Asia.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is decentralising its education budget to give provincial authorities more responsibility.
It will be more difficult for provinces to deal with their new responsibilities and make budgetary predictions with data that the central government has not gathered before, said Aip Badrujaman from the faculty of education at the State University of Jakarta.
According to participants, accurate projections into the future needs of their education systems are difficult, and education quality in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam has suffered because of inadequate data on demographic changes – especially as birth rates are slowing.
Against this changing backdrop, “We need to find ways to address two [education planning] problems: budget and the training of educators,” said Charoen Puwijit, a Thai Ministry of Education official.
“Education, especially higher education, is expanding in all three countries, possibly over-expanding. In South East Asia, the focus is on how to raise the quality of education,” said Mark Bray, a professor at Hong Kong University who organised the workshop.
The education picture in these countries had become more “fluid” than in the past. Education policy planners needed to consider a more complex picture, including cross-border migration as well as declining birth rates, Bray told University World News.
“The three countries have universal secondary education, which has increased demand for tertiary education,” he said. For education administrators, the challenge was also to deal with cross-border flows of students and manage new ways of teaching, such as distance learning.
While the most pressing challenges lie in primary and secondary education, reforms were necessary to guarantee a healthier development of the tertiary sector. “The base of the house needs to be kept standing, otherwise the roof, higher education, will fall,” Bray said.
Gabriele Göttelmann-Duret, head of the education and training unit at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, said problems were faced by many developing countries:
“On the one hand, we have more and more professionals working in the education sector. On the other, we are seeing increasing decentralisation in policy-making.”
The education sector planning workshop was the third of its kind organised by UNESCO. Earlier sessions, in 2008 and 2010, took education administrators from Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to Paris.
GERMANY: Plagiarism proceeding against minister splits academia
Michael Gardner26 January 2013 Issue No:256
Allegations of plagiarism in the doctoral thesis of Germany’s Education Minister Annette Schavan have sparked a dispute among academics, universities and science organisations. Meanwhile, undaunted by considerable pressure from various sides, the University of Düsseldorf has initiated formal proceedings against former student Schavan.
Christian Democrat Annette Schavan wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Düsseldorf 32 years ago.
Allegations of plagiarism arose last May, and the thesis was reviewed by Jewish studies scholar Stephan Rohrbacher, who concluded that wilful intent to deceive could be detected.
Schavan denied the allegations. One of her most outspoken supporters was Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, president of Humboldt University in Berlin.
Christian Democrat Olbertz, who was formerly education minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, was particularly outraged over results of the review being leaked to the press, and claimed that Rohrbacher himself should have prevented this from happening.
He described the event as “disgusting” and said that attempts were being made to damage a successful higher education minister’s reputation.
Olbertz is now calling for a second, independent review, despite the University of Düsseldorf having commissioned Bonn law expert Klaus F Gärditz to assess its preliminary proceedings. Gärditz confirmed that no procedural errors had been made and that the review performed did not give any cause for complaint.
Only a few days before the university officially initiated formal proceedings, the Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen, comprising Germany’s chief higher education and research bodies, issued a joint statement amounting to a harsh criticism of the University of Düsseldorf’s action.
The weighty alliance comprises the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Research Foundation, the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association, the Rectors’ Conference, the Leibniz Society, the Max Planck Society and the Science Council.
It argued that withdrawing a doctoral thesis required procedural elements such as the principle of multi-assessor verification, assessors, evaluators and decision-makers acting separately, and expertise in the relevant subject.
And it demanded that “all those playing a responsible role in the proceedings should act in accordance with established standards, also in ongoing proceedings”.
The University of Düsseldorf maintained that the statement was an attempt to pressurise it. The rules referred to by the alliance, it argued, do not apply to formal procedures but merely to “internal procedures not tied to a legal form that are intended to settle issues of misconduct”.
Regarding the requirement to have separate assessors, evaluators and decision-makers, the university stressed that this is not stipulated in official regulations on doctorates. Referring to the issue of multi-assessor verification, the university said decisions were taken by the 15 members of the faculty committee, and not by a single person.
Politicians have responded cautiously to the matter. Not surprisingly Schavan, who is Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closest ally, can reckon with her party’s support.
Christian Democrat Secretary General Hermann Gröhe has professed his unwavering trust in the minister, while opposition Green Party whip Jürgen Trittin said that innocence had to be assumed as long as proceedings were under way. However, Trittin added that if Schavan were stripped of her doctoral title, she would be “untenable” as minister of education and research.
Bernhard Kempen, president of the Deutscher Hochschulverband, which represents higher education lecturers, said the union fully trusted the University of Düsseldorf’s ability to conduct legally sound and orderly proceedings.
But he was highly critical of the intervention by the alliance of science organisations, arguing that “leading academic representatives are doing higher education and research a bad turn by creating the embarrassing impression that politically expedient results can be encouraged by speaking out for them in public”.
Andreas Keller, head of the higher education and research board of the teachers’ and scientists’ union Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, echoed that sentiment. Keller said that if the University of Düsseldorf did not confirm the allegations of plagiarism, this would create the impression that the alliance had been putting pressure on it.
He believes that in future, “as soon as decisions are made concerning the alliance, for example, issues such as university funding or money for research, the question will always arise whether this is because a helping hand was lent at the right time”. Christian Democrat Annette Schavan wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Düsseldorf 32 years ago.
Allegations of plagiarism arose last May, and the thesis was reviewed by Jewish studies scholar Stephan Rohrbacher, who concluded that wilful intent to deceive could be detected.
Nevertheless, Rohrbacher did stress that Schavan’s case could not be compared to that of her Christian Social Democrat colleague Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was stripped of his doctoral title and had to step down as defence minister in 2011.
Schavan denied the allegations. One of her most outspoken supporters was Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, president of Humboldt University in Berlin.
Christian Democrat Olbertz, who was formerly education minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, was particularly outraged over results of the review being leaked to the press, and claimed that Rohrbacher himself should have prevented this from happening.
He described the event as “disgusting” and said that attempts were being made to damage a successful higher education minister’s reputation.
Olbertz is now calling for a second, independent review, despite the University of Düsseldorf having commissioned Bonn law expert Klaus F Gärditz to assess its preliminary proceedings. Gärditz confirmed that no procedural errors had been made and that the review performed did not give any cause for complaint.
Only a few days before the university officially initiated formal proceedings, the Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen, comprising Germany’s chief higher education and research bodies, issued a joint statement amounting to a harsh criticism of the University of Düsseldorf’s action.
The weighty alliance comprises the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Research Foundation, the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association, the Rectors’ Conference, the Leibniz Society, the Max Planck Society and the Science Council.
It argued that withdrawing a doctoral thesis required procedural elements such as the principle of multi-assessor verification, assessors, evaluators and decision-makers acting separately, and expertise in the relevant subject.
And it demanded that “all those playing a responsible role in the proceedings should act in accordance with established standards, also in ongoing proceedings”.
The University of Düsseldorf maintained that the statement was an attempt to pressurise it. The rules referred to by the alliance, it argued, do not apply to formal procedures but merely to “internal procedures not tied to a legal form that are intended to settle issues of misconduct”.
Regarding the requirement to have separate assessors, evaluators and decision-makers, the university stressed that this is not stipulated in official regulations on doctorates. Referring to the issue of multi-assessor verification, the university said decisions were taken by the 15 members of the faculty committee, and not by a single person.
Politicians have responded cautiously to the matter. Not surprisingly Schavan, who is Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closest ally, can reckon with her party’s support.
Christian Democrat Secretary General Hermann Gröhe has professed his unwavering trust in the minister, while opposition Green Party whip Jürgen Trittin said that innocence had to be assumed as long as proceedings were under way. However, Trittin added that if Schavan were stripped of her doctoral title, she would be “untenable” as minister of education and research.
Bernhard Kempen, president of the Deutscher Hochschulverband, which represents higher education lecturers, said the union fully trusted the University of Düsseldorf’s ability to conduct legally sound and orderly proceedings.
But he was highly critical of the intervention by the alliance of science organisations, arguing that “leading academic representatives are doing higher education and research a bad turn by creating the embarrassing impression that politically expedient results can be encouraged by speaking out for them in public”.
Andreas Keller, head of the higher education and research board of the teachers’ and scientists’ union Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, echoed that sentiment. Keller said that if the University of Düsseldorf did not confirm the allegations of plagiarism, this would create the impression that the alliance had been putting pressure on it.
Sunday 27 January 2013
Value of construction in Cambodia skyrockets
- Last Updated on 23 January 2013
- By Hin Pisei
- The amount of money spent on construction in Cambodia soared by 72
per cent in 2012 compared to 2011, according to data from the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction.
The ministry said it had issued 1,694 construction patents covering 6.5 million square metres of land, involving total capital of $2.1 billion in 2012, compared with 2,125 patents for 4.2 million square metres and capital of $1.2 billion in 2011, an increase of 71.9 per cent, the data shows.
Lao Tip Seiha, deputy general director of construction at the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction and an adviser to the Supreme National Economic Council, said the significant growth of capital was due to several construction projects in 2012, as many high buildings on more than 3,000 square metres each had been constructed in Phnom Penh in 2012 and in provinces such Preah Sihanouk, Battambang, Kampong Thom and Kandal.
“Because Cambodia’s economic situation is stable, the capital has increased well, local and international investors are confident in the political policies, and our country is rich in infrastructure,” he said.
As Cambodia’s population and economy have climbed steadily, the demand for housing, trade buildings, offices, factories, hotels, schools, hospitals and entertainment centres has increased as well.
“In 2013, construction will be boosted further than in 2012 despite Cambodia holding a general election, because the economic situation, daily life, micro-finance and security are good, and investors have confidence in the government. All these are the foundations to push the national economy, because it can provide many jobs to people such as workers, architects, engineers, technicians... and urge the price of real estate up further,” Tip Seiha said.
Many countries have invested in Cambodia since 2000, such as China, South Korea, Britain, Thailand and Malaysia.
In 2012, several big Japanese companies have also invested heavily in Cambodia.
Interesting times for Phnom Penh office market
- Last Updated on 23 January 2013
- By Ryan O’Sullivan
Canadia Tower in central Phnom Penh. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post
Demand from global financial and manufacturing companies kept occupancy costs high in Tokyo, while in Beijing pharmaceutical companies continued to expand.
Worldwide, office demand stemmed from the automotive, high-tech and energy industries. The latter is evident in Cambodia, where drilling off the coast near Sihanoukville has helped to increase office demand. Thus, companies such as Total and Chevron are large office occupiers, and new Japanese oil exploration firms will also establish operations in Cambodia by the end of 2013.
The growing insurance industry, particularly life insurance, is also a key office demand driver in Phnom Penh.
Cambodian Life, Manulife and Prudential jointly occupy more than 3,000 sqm of office space in Phnom Penh and will likely expand by the end of this year.
The top office buildings in Phnom Penh are seeking rents of between $21 and $28 psqm/m, and with the lack of high-quality office developments, rents are unlikely to decrease.
In terms of new supply, Vattanac Capital will be ready for occupation this year. The building will be the first Grade A office development in the Kingdom.
The development recently won an award for the best commercial property in Southeast Asia, and its specifications match many office buildings in Hong Kong and Singapore. This is not only welcome news for occupiers, but also helps to elevate Cambodia’s standing among investors.
Cambodia’s sound macro-economic fundamentals, the first Grade A office development in the country, and the continued expansion of multinational corporations will make 2013 an interesting year for the Phnom Penh office market.
Number of construction companies in Cambodia soars
- Last Updated on 09 January 2013
- By Seun Son
- Construction and design companies that have registered for business
in Cambodia have grown to number 1,205 at the end of 2012, according to
an official at the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and
Construction.
Lav Tepseiha, deputy director of the construction department of the ministry said it is a large number, and is good for Cambodian construction.
“The construction sector in Cambodia has increased every year and it is continuing to boost the Kingdom’s real estate,” he said.
There are 932 Cambodian and 273 foreign construction and design firms at the end of 2012, he said.
“I have noticed that foreign companies that invest the construction in Cambodia have climbed much more, especially in 2012, because they are looking for the potential of construction investment in Cambodia,” he said.
Foreign investors in Cambodia come from 16 countries: China, Korea, England, Japan, Russia, Lao, Malaysia, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, Belgium, Australia and France. China is number one, South Korea number two and England third.
This growth is a good sign for Cambodia’s real estate, said Tepseiha. With the Kingdom’s political stability and rich human resources have come technical prowess, and specialist construction companies have sprung up.
“Companies will increase more and more next year because the number of proposed projects that are being submitted for permission continue to increase,” he added.
Key Real Estate Company CEO Soun Seap said that this growth is good for Cambodia’s economy.
Cambodia’s construction sector has increased due to economic and political stability, he said.
Phnom Penh’s historic quarter to go pedestrian
- Last Updated on 14 January 2013
- By Bennett Murray
A new tourist promenade is to open in the heart of Phnom Penh’s old French quarter.
Scheduled for a February opening, the tourist walk zone will provide
an outdoor leisure area on Street 13 that will be closed to cars and
motorbikes on weekends from 6pm till 12am, as well as on national
holidays.
It will be adjacent to the colonial-era post office that today houses the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication.
“Everywhere in the world, especially in the cities, there are some
places for the people to walk down,” said Minister of Tourism Thong
Khon, whose ministry is helping Phnom Penh Capital Hall build the
tourist walk zone.
“In Cambodia, we also need a place for tourists to walk down.”
The neighborhood includes some of Cambodia’s most prominent examples
of French architecture from the turn of the 20th century, including the
disused police commissariat, Manolis Hotel and the Banque de l’Indochine
that today houses Van’s Restaurant.
“It is good to walk down for tourists because of the large, colonial-style buildings,” said Khon.
According UNESCO Head of Office Anne LeMaistre, it is not just tourists who stand to benefit.
“Phnom Penh has a unique chance to have a garden-city image with
large avenues and trees, which is extremely rare for a capital in the
region. The colonial heritage and the Khmer New architecture contribute
enormously to the identity and beauty of the city.
“It is an opportunity which should not be missed for obvious
touristic reasons but also for the memory of all inhabitants of Phnom
Penh,” she said.
“Heritage, silence, space and green environment are part of this
quality of life and appreciation of living in a city. In addition, this
area is unfortunately the only remaining coherent historic quarter of
Phnom Penh,” she added.
Restoration and preservation in the area has been erratic, with some buildings getting far more treatment than others.
“The post office and the Van’s Restaurant were restored and are well-maintained buildings,” said LeMaistre.
“The Manolis Hotel and the former Commissariat are magnificent buildings but which need urgent interventions,” she added.
LeMaistre said that despite widespread enthusiasm for preserving
Cambodia’s Angkorian heritage, more needs to be done to promote the
country’s more recent urban heritage.
UNESCO is supporting the efforts of the Heritage Mission, which is
attached to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, to make the old
French Quarter a special heritage protected zone.
However, increased visitation to the area may encourage preservation of the historic quarter.
“The tourist walk zone will hopefully attract Phnom Penh inhabitants
who will discover this area, maybe, for the first time and invite them
to appreciate the harmony of the architecture and the pleasure of
walking in a nice environment,” said LeMaistre. “We hope that this
discovery and appreciation will lead to the understanding of preserving
heritage.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Bennett Murray at ppp.lifestyle@gmail.com
Australians mourn King Father’s passing
Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, H.E. Penny Richards- Last Updated on 25 January 2013
- By Penny Richards
- Australia Day is an occasion on which we reflect on the events of the
past year and look forward to the challenges of the coming year.
Cambodians are currently mourning the death of the King Father, His Majesty Norodom Sihanouk. Prime Minister Gillard visited the Royal Palace on 19 November 2012 to express her condolences to Her Majesty the Queen Mother NorodomMonineath and His Majesty the King NorodomSihamoni upon the death of His Majesty the King Father Norodom Sihanouk.
The King Father was a towering figure in Cambodian history: he oversaw Cambodia’s independence and its development as a modern state. He played a significant role in global and regional relations. He was integral to the negotiation of the Paris Peace Accords signed in 1991.The King Father’s death reminds us of the warm historical ties between Australia and Cambodia. Australia’s former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gareth Evans, worked closely with the King Father and other Cambodian leaders to draft the Accords. Australian General John Sanderson led the military component of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), which oversaw the election of a new National Assembly in 1993 and the promulgation of Cambodia’s current constitution. Since then Australia has assisted Cambodia’s development in many fields.Cambodia’s role as Chair of ASEAN in 2012 provided the impetus for a higher pace of activity in Australia Cambodia bilateral relations and regional cooperation. Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator the Hon Bob Carr, visited Cambodia twice, in March and again in July. His visits highlighted the work Australia is doing to support Cambodia’s health sector, especially through our midwifery program, the avoidable blindness initiative and the anti-drug resistant malaria initiative we are progressing through the East Asia Summit.His visits underlined our cooperation with APSARA and UNESCO to build a sound framework for managing Cambodia’s cultural heritage, in particular growing tourism flows to the Angkor World Heritage Park. Senator Carr also reinforced Australia’s support for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, to which Australia has been the second largest donor, emphasising the importance of judicial independence.Australia’s Minister for Trade and Competitiveness, Dr Craig Emerson MP, also visited Cambodia twice, in August and again in November. As one of ASEAN’s six free trade agreement partners, Australia has joined negotiations for a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which were launched in Phnom Penh in November.Australia will work with Cambodia and other partners to conclude a comprehensive, high quality agreement which will further deepen regional economic integration and trade liberalisation.Dr Emerson is also Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Asian Century Policy. Australia’s White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century sets out a blueprint for further deepening Australia’s already strong engagement with Asia, including through business, education and people-to-people links with Cambodia and other Asian countries.Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attended the East Asia Summit Leaders’ Meeting chaired by Prime Minister Hun Sen in November. Australia considers the East Asia Summit to be the premier forum for discussion of political and security issues affecting our region. We were pleased that Leaders were able to engage each other in frank discussions with no issues off the table. Australia will also work closely with other EAS members to take forward practical cooperation in key areas: finance; education; energy and environment; disaster management; and pandemic diseases.In her public remarks, Prime Minister Gillard acknowledged that Cambodia had made a great deal of progress on human rights since the days of the Khmer Rouge but said that more needed to be done, with a focus on extrajudicial killings, land disputes, electoral reform and freedom of speech.Looking forward to next year, we will mark the 20th anniversary since the 1993 general election supervised by UNTAC, the military component of which was led by Australian General John Sanderson. In the context of the July 2013 National Assembly elections it will be important for Cambodia to defend and implement the rights enshrined in its 1993 Constitution, including the rights of freedom of assembly, association and speech.Throughout 2013 Australia will continue to work with Cambodia in many fields: reducing poverty, promoting regional security and fighting transnational crime. We will strengthen our people-to-people links through our scholarship and volunteers program. I would like to thank all our partners, both Cambodian and international, for your ongoing contribution to and support for those goals.I would like to wish everyone a happy Australia Day, and a safe and successful 2013.
Banker turns English teacher and loves it
- Last Updated on 25 January 2013
- By Stuart Alan Becker
- When Ashley Irving worked for the prestigious Rothschild Bank in Sydney, earning a massive salary and enjoying a lot of status in the community, he still wasn’t happy with all the stress that comes naturally with corporate finance.On vacation at Ayer’s Rock in Australia he met a group of three English teachers from Argentina. They were so happy and fun, he decided to visit them in Argentina and the trip changed his life. He walked away from corporate finance and made his career in the teaching of English.He absolutely loves it.Today Irving works as principal at the Australian Center for Education (ACE), a purely English language school and the largest one in Phnom Penh.“We belong to IDP education based in Melbourne. The main business lines are placing students with universities in most English speaking countries,” Irving said.Purely an English language school, ACE offers the IELTS test and variations including academic English, general English, English for young learns and programs for kids.Irving says the communicative method is used.“We get them talking. To learn language they use the language; the focus on kids is getting them to use language, reading and speaking.”At ACE, every term is 10 weeks, 45 hour courses and cost about $200 to $230 per term depending on the level.“We are affordable but not cheap. People who come in are serious. The families spend money and they want something for their money. If it wasn’t working it would not come back.”One of Irving’s own early teachers had been profoundly influenced by Professor Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his work in linguistics and language acquisition.“He wore a T-shirt that said Chomsky is My Hero.”ACE’s general English course is available to ages 16 and up, with levels from beginner to upper intermediate.“We test reading and grammar and use that to establish their level and place them in appropriate course, and have courses running from 6:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night.”Even though he’s now the principal and therefore the administrator, Irving loves teaching English and remains passionate about it.“If you are giving out positive energy, they enjoy it and you get it back tenfold, from people in the room. Some days you go home dancing. The best teachers are nice people, they talk to you, and you put them in front of a class and they light up.”ACE is located on Street 214 in Kampuchea Krom. They also have a school in Siem Reap. Irving invites anyone to take a placement test for the $5 fee, which students get back when they enroll.Irving has been here in Cambodia for the last eight months and loves his job.“My only regret is not doing it 10 years earlier,” he said.Between the Phnom Penh and Siem Reap schools, ACE has about 8,500 students.The ages are 8 to adult, and most of the students are ages 17 to 21 and more than 95 per cent Khmer students.“English is the mandated language of ASEAN, so from the top down English is important. The Khmer s are all keen from the start. We’ve been here 20 years and we’re well known. They come to us for English and once they are there, they are fun to be around.”When you smile at somebody here, Irving says, they smile back.“The levels of cynicism are much lower, which is great fun. The teenagers are open and they’ll come and talk to you. It is a privilege, so the need the break down barriers doesn’t exist, because they already assume you’re worth talking to.”Irving studied applied mathematics at Australia’s La Trobe University and worked for many years for National Mutual Insurance as an actuary, dealing with statistics and probabilities.Following his term as a corporate banker, his whole life changed when he met the teachers from Argentina.Returning to Australia after time teaching English in Argentina and Brazil, Irving went to work at Sydney’s Holmes College teaching international students from around the world.He later became director of study at Access Language Center at Sydney and managed the teaching center for the Adult Migrant English School Service (AMES) in New South Wales.“To learn a language is just sheer hard work. Work, review, go to class, be prepared to fail, be embarrassed, it’s hard, for a teen or adult, and for somebody working full time it is really hard.”ACE employs 120 teachers both expats and Khmer.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Alan Becker at stuart.becker@gmail.com
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