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there certainly seems to be a pro- reform, anti-reform debate going on. Some good progress has been made in reducing corruption but its not very visible to the outside world. And you get pronouncements from HE about things which don't get enforced, or get enforced only for a short term and not sure if that's people pushing back or its by intention. he is certainly a very smart politician

pczz wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:22 pm there certainly seems to be a pro- reform, anti-reform debate going on. Some good progress has been made in reducing corruption but its not very visible to the outside world. And you get pronouncements from HE about things which don't get enforced, or get enforced only for a short term and not sure if that's people pushing back or its by intention. he is certainly a very smart politician

From what I understand from your posts you are currently 'in the outside world', but yet you see 'some good progress has been made in reducing corruption'.

Maybe you could elaborate?

It is an interesting article, which at least tries to look into the situation with some depth rather than the usual "All seeing eye" stuff which we get all too much of.

Kammekor wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:47 pm

pczz wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:22 pm there certainly seems to be a pro- reform, anti-reform debate going on. Some good progress has been made in reducing corruption but its not very visible to the outside world. And you get pronouncements from HE about things which don't get enforced, or get enforced only for a short term and not sure if that's people pushing back or its by intention. he is certainly a very smart politician

From what I understand from your posts you are currently 'in the outside world', but yet you see 'some good progress has been made in reducing corruption'.

Maybe you could elaborate?

Sure. Most of the improvements have been in preventing low level corruption by getting people to pay at a bank or wing instead of giving cash over the counter. This applies in many places including tax registration, which I have done, and I believe tax payments, which I have not. The police used to stop barang as a matter of convenience to extract fines, I haven't been stopped for 3 years, but Khmer without helmets behind me have. Village chief did birth certificates for free and family book and residence book after HE told them to stop charging and when I got my driving license renewed I just paid the standard fee at a wing office setup in the grounds of the ministry. Even the photocopier was free. Just this week I see similar things in th MFA building where they are setting up proper counters to issue passports there instead of trekking down to the Passport office. We got a passport at the passport office last year, no need for a minder, no tea money at every desk. Previously you needed to take fist full of small bills to move through, or pay a fixer. Its far from perfect, and of course there are still a lot of payments being made at high level and in some ministries, but things are moving in the right direction.

pczz wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 8:51 am

Kammekor wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:47 pm

pczz wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:22 pm there certainly seems to be a pro- reform, anti-reform debate going on. Some good progress has been made in reducing corruption but its not very visible to the outside world. And you get pronouncements from HE about things which don't get enforced, or get enforced only for a short term and not sure if that's people pushing back or its by intention. he is certainly a very smart politician

From what I understand from your posts you are currently 'in the outside world', but yet you see 'some good progress has been made in reducing corruption'.

Maybe you could elaborate?

Sure. Most of the improvements have been in preventing low level corruption by getting people to pay at a bank or wing instead of giving cash over the counter. This applies in many places including tax registration, which I have done, and I believe tax payments, which I have not. The police used to stop barang as a matter of convenience to extract fines, I haven't been stopped for 3 years, but Khmer without helmets behind me have. Village chief did birth certificates for free and family book and residence book after HE told them to stop charging and when I got my driving license renewed I just paid the standard fee at a wing office setup in the grounds of the ministry. Even the photocopier was free. Just this week I see similar things in th MFA building where they are setting up proper counters to issue passports there instead of trekking down to the Passport office. We got a passport at the passport office last year, no need for a minder, no tea money at every desk. Previously you needed to take fist full of small bills to move through, or pay a fixer. Its far from perfect, and of course there are still a lot of payments being made at high level and in some ministries, but things are moving in the right direction.

The new passport is an interesting example. There's a multi-tier pricing system, according to the speed you pay a certain price. Seems fair right? But it's a simple scam. Whether you pay for 'fast' or for normal, your passport is processed at the same time, in about 2 working days. The only difference is the time the passport is released - if you pay more, it will be released earlier. So the pricing system has nothing to do with the actual speed, the cheaper passports are simply not released for about 5 weeks so people will pay more.

One thing that might have been an improvement is the salary of teachers is now paid into their ACLEDA bank account. Before it was in paid in cash by the director of the local 'district office of education' and of course for this service they got a piece of the pie every month. Sometimes the director would use the money for his own investment for a few months, handing out the salaries with a delay. That's no longer possible, the middle man has been cut out you'd think. I have heard these days there's no monthly piece of the pie anymore, but getting the form to have your salary transferred into a bank account ain't exactly free too. It's just shifted from monthly small fees to a one time high fee.

I don't see so much improvement, I see it shifting. The dragon is still hungry, and needs to be fed. All those LX470s and LX570s are getting rather old, and need to be replaced by shiny Land Rovers, and maintaining those ain't cheap.

Kammekor wrote:
The new passport is an interesting example. There's a multi-tier pricing system, according to the speed you pay a certain price. Seems fair right? But it's a simple scam. Whether you pay for 'fast' or for normal, your passport is processed at the same time, in about 2 working days. The only difference is the time the passport is released - if you pay more, it will be released earlier. So the pricing system has nothing to do with the actual speed, the cheaper passports are simply not released for about 5 weeks so people will pay more.

Its inherently more fair than before because you no longer have to pay bribes. It's now completely optional to pay for expedited service, regardless of what that really means behind the scenes. If you don't need it quickly, you pay only the official list price. Public servants have less opportunity to steal from the public and the government gets more revenue, which can be used to continue to improve public services.

Australia (and I'd guess lots of other countries) has the same system for passports: pay more to jump the queue. If you don't need it, you're not obliged to pay for it. For all anyone knows they're all processed much quicker than advertised, so as to set expectations about service delivery.

And our sytem us a co because passports are outsourced so the govt allows outsourcing company to provide a crap service and pay for a decent 1 to make more profit. Uk passpirts can be scanned at embassy, pribted and posted bext dsy so why do we have to put up with that idiot outsourcing girm taking up yo 6 weeks? Cos they pay the government fir the contract. Maybe we should be discuusing how corruption us disguised in the west before criticising the visible corruption in cambodia. At least here the "corruption" is trsnsparent!

yeah, the hypocritical western countries don't like the surveillance state exposed as it is the antithesis of democracy.
this FISA memo is an enormous scandal- but even the senate may not see it for fear of leakage.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/24/poli ... index.html