… I am glad to return to the district of Banteaymeas again and HE Saom Chen, former Governor of the province and Member of the Parliament, told me that it is my sixth time in the district since the establishment of the former State of Cambodia and it is my fourth time to Kompot in just 2003. I have a great pleasure and honour to be invited to join with all of our people in the inauguration of a Buddhist temple in the pagoda of Kiribopharumpoeun. I will have more of the inauguration ceremonies for Buddhist temples until the electoral campaign starts. By then our people may not see me often in public anymore but that does not mean I will be going anywhere at all. I would be going to rice fields to see our irrigation system, to plough land, to dig canals, etc. I will not spend time making campaign.
… Our people in the district of Banteaymeas as well as our people throughout the country have gone through the regime of genocide with destruction in all fields – schools and Buddhist temples were no exception. As is instructed by the Buddhist principles, those who perform good deed will be blessed with good result, and those who perform on the contrary would be returned with bad result. Take a real example, the regime that reigned Cambodia three years seven months and twenty days was toppled by the people’s forces and yesterday our people organized a day of remembrance of the deaths under the genocide regime. I am glad to see that after January 07, 1979, schools and pagodas have grown like mushrooms, let alone the pagoda of Kiribopharumpoeun has brought to sight so many achievements.
… In one of the Khmer Rouge documents discussing issues of class identification and class struggle in the Cambodian society published in 1966 or 1967, monks were classified as petty bourgeoisie class and because of this reason when Pol Pot came to power monks were publicly denounced as exploiting class. But I am sure we all are glad that the regime was over and we all are happy with what we have achieved today. May I recall our people that if we all maintain our forest well, we will not be facing with problem of no firewood. Or if we could maintain peace and national reconciliation, we would be able to maintain our pace of development as in the last years. Though we have been in fast pace in other places, we have had some projects that are slow in action because of long procedure to fulfil. However, late is better than never and we have the construction of roads 31 and 33 started already.
… We still have some problems to tackle especially 36% of our people are living under the poverty line. We all have to make efforts to resolve the issue, from village to village, community to community, and person to person. I am very pleased to see that our nation has attained a full and complete peace, a condition under which many achievements could be made possible. Wars seem to occur here and there — Aceh of Indonesia and islands of Mindanao in the Philippines included. We used to go through sufferings caused by war and we are shocked to see that wars are taking place. I wish to see that our people defend our nature, forest, political stability, and national reconciliation so that we could attain our development opportunity… With regard to what I have just said about the Prime Minister candidate for the third term, we have in the coming election 25 candidates from 25 political parties who will have to compete. Our people will be granted full rights to decide who they would like to entrust with the task of developing the country and no violence should be inflicted upon anyone because of whatever political party they may vote for.
As I am in Banteaymeas I wish to narrate a story of Chev and Khlork who are in fact friend with one another. One day Khlork caught a tortoise and cooked for his friend Mr. Chev. But Chev has not got good teeth to eat the tortoise meat so he said “Chev, it is not good to eat tortoise because it makes your business a failure since tortoise is a crawling animal.” Some days later, Chev invited Khlork for a dinner at his house. He served Khlork with dish made of shellfish. Khlork said to Chev “you told me not to eat tortoise for it is a crawling animal, but why do you eat shellfish that is not a crawling animal either?” This could be resembled with the fact that some politicians defamed the Royal Government of crawling as a tortoise as the toad’s leap strategy would be too slow. Let me remind them that it is slow but it has got a destination. It is no different to those who do not know how to sing but to blame those who can sing. Well it is understandable as the season of making promises has come. But they would be rebuked by our people sooner or later.
Samdech Hun Sen on that occasion offered Riel 30 million and US$ 2,500 to the pagoda of Kiribopharumpoeun, ten million Riel for the pagoda of Banteaymeas, three school buildings of fifteen classrooms to the Primary School of Kansaom Ak, a school building of five classrooms to the Junior College of Prey Trasak, a sewing class building and fifty sewing machines, one 7 KVA generator, three computers and a printer, one photocopier, three 14″ colour TVs and three VCRs to the College of Toukmeas, and a school building of six classrooms to the Primary School of Kiribophachamkalngor.
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