By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)
"People power" is not beyond reach in Cambodia. Skeptics misunderstand people power and equate it with bloody rebellion. Khmers are Buddhists -- gentle and placid, who don't rise against a ruthless dictatorship.
The Albert Einstein Institution, committed to the defense of freedom, says: "Nonviolent action (also sometimes referred to as people power, political defiance and nonviolent struggle) is a technique of action for applying power in a conflict by using symbolic protests, noncooperation and defiance, but not physical violence."
My nine years (1980-1989) in the Khmer resistance against Vietnam's military invasion and occupation took me near death's door many times, but I never believed we could defeat the Hanoi armies that brought the Americans to a negotiations table earlier. But we did believe that an effective Khmer resistance would bring Hanoi to the negotiations table. That, in fact, happened.
Except, the Khmer nationalists never prepared themselves for post-1991 Paris Peace Accords.
Adding to the detrimental lack of careful strategic planning with necessary "next steps," they were trapped in denial, blaming, as many simply realigned themselves for political positions.
The game of "svar pa'at bai loeu mo'at po-pe" (monkey smears rice on a goat's mouth) continued until today: The monkey ate the farmer's rice and smeared rice on a goat's mouth so the goat would be blamed for eating the rice; the farmer didn't know better and took out his anger on the goat, forgetting that goats don't eat rice.
Population has power
I stood before my introduction to political science classes for 13 years, driving home the same point every semester, that a government's "right to rule" is based on the people putting it in power.
