… I am glad to be able to come back to the district of Pearaing to inaugurate the newly built Buddhist temple in the pagoda of Chruy Udom. As I am here it recalls me of when we liberated the Phnom Penh city, we had to first come by Prey Veng. In fact the pagoda of Chruy Udom has been a newly built pagoda in 1987 and it responds to our people’s difficulties in moving from flooded homes to pagodas that are far away…
… This made us think of dharma instruction about the four scarcities. One of the four scarcities is that we could not get born by the time Buddha gained enlightenment. This could be resembled by giving respect to the Buddhist instruction in the form of building pagodas and others deemed necessary by the Buddhist instruction. The second is that we may not have opportunity to pay tribute to our living Buddhas, whom in fact is our parents and grand parents. This could be explained in part about the fact that we have built this pagoda so that our elders could go to practice Buddhist instructions in places closer to home. The third scarcity is to have a chance to listen to the Buddhist dharma teaching. But presently we have done that because our people now enjoy opportunity in listening to the Buddha teaching offered by our Buddhist monks in every religious events. They also have time to listen to the teaching on radio and TV as well. The fourth scarcity is to offer as donation of one’s resources to the poor. One good example of this is that we have raised orphan children left from the genocide and they all are alive and educated.
… Talking about the situation of Pearaing district, in times of floods, only few high lands were seen in mid of water everywhere. These lands are the foundation of the Buddhist temples. I could recall that the flood situation in 2002 had been serious but because of assistance provided by the CPP work team in the district and the intervention forces of my bodyguard units, we had been able to save our dry season rice of about 4513 hectares. In addition to various infrastructural investments in the district, I have intended to build the national road 8 through the district of Pearaing from the commune of Prek Tameak, via the bridge of Sin Song to the national road 11. This road will be a connection that links Phnom Penh, Kandal, Prey Veng and Kompong Cham at Koh Sotin. We all see that there is a need to build a bridge across the Toach (small) river in this commune. This bridge could be a connection to Kompong Leav and Pearaing in Prey Veng and Lvea Em and Khsach Kandal of Kandal province. One Bailey bridge here will be a profit for four districts. I would instruct the Ministry of Rural Development to be principal financial officer and the project will be studied and built by the military engineering team headed by Gen. Kung Ieng. We might not have the bridge built before end of this rainy season, but we surely will have it built before the next rainy season.
… We have built many bridges already but the Peamte and Chhlong bridges have never been built before. Many people promised in the past to build these bridges but never have they made them happen. Talking about feasibility, the bridge construction could be impossible because of the canals’ depths. But we now have built them and I would say that we might be having one more bridge built over the Mekong River – the Neakloeung Bridge. The Bailey bridge to be built across the Toach River must be built for the sake of traffics not only among the four districts mentioned, but for all over the country… Our strategy to reduce poverty has been to develop infrastructure, the achievement of which is no different to what some people said “Samdech no longer needs to bring rice to us, because Samdech already gave us canals and dikes making our rice cultivation fruitful and our lives improved.” In other words peace that we have realized is invaluable as our people no longer are afraid of wars and they could go to practice Buddhism. Wars serve interest of weapons sellers outside the country. This is what I used to tell our people that I am giving them fishing tackles instead of fish. Some ill-thought politicians did not see infrastructural development help in many ways to resolve our people’s daily problems.
… Some people have dreamed of becoming Prime Minister and are preparing for working in the Council of Ministers. As of present CPP has 64 seats in the National Assembly and seven of them are currently in the province of Prey Veng. But some people said that CPP will have none in Prey Veng after the next election. Some parties say they have fifty seats or sixty seats. This means we, who have 64 seats, will have nothing. In relations to the forthcoming election, as I have seen written in the newspaper, regarding the spot time for broadcast by different parties. I wish to say that the facilitation for broadcast by political parties that are guaranteed by law will be respected. First, all campaigns will have to be protected from all disturbances by the local authorities, irrespective of political tendencies. Second, broadcast by national TVK will be ten minutes for each party equally. I have recommended that TVK and National Radio, in addition to the equal spot time allocated for campaign purpose, they could also broadcast news of activities by each political party in their campaign action. Which party is winning the election is no longer important as safeguarding peace and political stability in Cambodia. If I were to no longer be Prime Minister it is not a problem but we have to have peace, only with peace we could make development. I would not promise our people as others would do, I will do what I can as I see it needs to be done…
Samdech Hun Sen offers on that occasion a sum of 23 million Riel to the pagoda of Chruy Udom, a school building with five classrooms to the Primary School of Prek Tasar and a school building of five classrooms to the Primary School of Khsom Choeung.
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