By Gaffar Peang-Meth
Guest Commentary
United Press International, Asia
Washington, DC, United States, — A “progressive and systematic overhaul” of its society is what Cambodia needs, according to Dr. Naranhkiri Tith, a specialist in country risk analysis, former civil servant with the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development and a former professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.Overhaul Khmer society? Tith says that only by freeing itself from its past can Cambodia gradually resolve its economic, institutional, legal, political and social problems.
Cambodia has been a monarchy since the first century A.D. – except briefly under the 1970-1975 Khmer Republic under Lon Nol, and the 1975-1979 Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot. That is the legacy Tith refers to, although he knows that criticizing something that has been the only way and the only thought of a people for 2,000 years will not make him popular.
Yet Cambodia is the land of his birth, he insists, and no one is going to prevent him from thinking and applying his best thoughts to help bring change, even if he has to step on toes.
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