Just a Bowl of Rice

Why should the CPP-lead gov't worries? After all, it's just a bowl of rice. Right? WRONG.

There are plenty of reasons to worry about if you are the Prime Minister of a rapidly faltering economy. Especially, when majority of your people are poor or extremely poor, in the case of Cambodia, going into July election. That is why you saw PM Hun Sen, himself, came out to try to tackle this pressing problem which is more or less out of his control at the moment. If the problem persist or worsen, it would spell big trouble for his ruling party going into the election, unless he and his top associates are willing to spend their own fortunes to reverse the supply side - Something I won't even bet my 25 cents on.

The shortage of rice supply is more widespread than initially presumed, if not on a global level certainly it is happening on a regional scale, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Phillipine etc.. What remains to be seen is how this highly corrupted government deal with the urgent matter at hand. So far, the government has tried and it goes something like the paragraph below.

First, our Minister of Commerce Cham Prasidh began to address it by a policy of fingers pointing, looking for scapegoats in an effort to deny responsibility which certainly showed a lack of leadership and vision to resolve. Secondly, the PM has come out swinging at the rice exporters by imposing a ban and later apologized and retracting his executive order.

What makes our economy unique from the other nations is that our economic policy is highly dependent, extremely manipulated, speculated which any product can be, as it has been exagerated to a ridiculous price level. Now, we see the adverse affect of it, and the way I see it going forward at an intermediate future as one of the world leading economies,USA, is in a retreating mode, the boom period in Cambodia might came to an unexpected halt, especially in this highly speculative environment where fear would rule over logic and common sense. A lot of thing in Cambodia are extremely over priced, including the price of a land.

In summary, my argument would come down to this - At the end of the day, and when it comes to the stomach matter, a Bowl of Rice is what really matter most. That is why I stated that if I were the CPP ruling party, I would be worried sick. Unless, I can beg for more money from donors' countries which is something more likely.

Mr. James Carvelle said famously during President Clinton 1992 election campaign,"IT 'S THE ECONOMY, STUPIDS."

As for my part, I can say for the sake of saying - IT'S A BOWL OF RICE, IDIOTS.