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southeastasianists · 6 years ago

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Cambodia will vote on Sunday July 29. Today, the 20 competing parties can make their final appeals to the voters. It is the endpoint of a campaign that many have dramatically dismissed as a death knell for Cambodian democracy. Both publicly—through articles and social media posts—and in private conversations, people often draw on their observations and memories of Cambodia’s past elections to weigh in on the state of politics and to consider what options remain.

First, some background. National elections are held every five years. In 2013, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), headed by Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, came close to defeating Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The results shocked the ruling party, which has effectively been in charge of the country’s affairs for almost four decades.

After the commune elections in 2017 demonstrated that popular discontent with Cambodia’s longstanding leadership had not ceased, the government began a series of drastic measures. Sokha was accused of plotting a “colour revolution” with the help of the US and jailed on treason charges, for which he could face 14 years imprisonment. Rainsy left the country under threat of defamation charges. In November 2017, the Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party and barred its members from political activities for five years before redistributing their seats. The bulk of them went back to the ruling party, a handful were scattered among other “opposition” parties.

So on Sunday, 19 parties will contest the CPP’s powerful grip. But without a major opposition party, this year’s election looks markedly different than previous ones.

The 2013 elections provide the most common backdrop to structure people’s observations of this year’s campaigns: compared to the bustling excitement and the loud and cheerful confidence displayed by CNRP voters all over the country, the opposition parties’ campaigns this year are mostly remarkable for what they are not. Even the capital Phnom Penh, otherwise the hub of campaign activities, is mostly silent and few things indicate that challengers to the CPP remain.

Yet for someone who has spent years combing through archives that document the work of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) it is the country’s first elections that still shape observations, at times producing an almost eerie sense of déjà vu:

what exactly is the role and agenda of the small parties? Will the government track voters’ choices in the ballot boxes? What will the total numbers of votes cast reveal about the future of Cambodia’s democracy?

These questions, now on the forefront of many voters’ minds, were just as intensely debated 25 years ago. At the end of its mission to implement the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, UNTAC organised the country’s first democratic elections in 1993. The highly anticipated event was globally celebrated (some might say overly glorified) as the “birth of democracy” in Cambodia.

In 1993 as well as in 2018 a total of 20 parties registered to compete in the elections.

However, then, as now, the concept of a “political competition of ideas” was mostly elusive in an environment marked by fear and insecurity.

In 1993 it was the memories of the war that loomed large. During their televised campaign speeches Cambodian politicians alluded repeatedly to “mountains of bones, rivers of blood and an ocean of suffering” and appealed to their fellow politicians to prioritise national reconciliation. The theme was also evident in the parties’ names—Khmer Neutral Party or Liberal Reconciliation Party—and party symbols that used images like shaking hands or the peace dove.

Amidst the ongoing political violence in the country, the candidates chose their campaign locations and words carefully. “We live with the tiger and therefore must act in such a way as to avoid being eaten”, explained a candidate to an UNTAC official. Another observer noted in his report: “… the Bulletin of the Democratic Party is printed in a no-fuss black and white typescript. The Bulletin’s lackluster presentation style is carried over in content. This is no doubt a deliberate tactic to avoid direct criticism and the possibility of harassment.”

In 2018 similar tendencies can be observed. Many of the CPP’s competitors embrace the least objectionable of all causes in their campaigns and vaguely profess to “protect forests” or “end poverty” once in power. In his office, one party leader handed me a small program, the size of half a postcard, and gestured towards the breast pocket of his shirt: Easy to put it in here, he said. Easy to hide. And of course, small programs are also cheaper: most of the parties are notoriously under-financed and have only limited funding to spend on the campaigns. They focus their attention on going door to door in the provinces, talking to prospective voters and distributing their leaflets.

In the space of the city of Phnom Penh this translates into an overwhelming presence for the CPP. Huge, well-lit billboards have been erected at major intersections of the city. They line many of the large boulevards, streets and bridges. The party’s programs, slogans, and symbols have been glued to building walls at regular intervals. The portraits of the party’s leaders, Hun Sen and National Assembly president Heng Samrin, shoulder by shoulder, are omnipresent. There are tents, where party supporters alternately play campaign speeches and music. Expensive cars adorned with the CPP symbol can be spotted all over town. Shops sell CPP hats, shirts, phone cases and other merchandise. Rallies involve thousands of identically dressed supporters in cars, open trucks, and motorbikes and are flawlessly choreographed events: police are positioned on every corner, their ears pressed to their walky-talkies, waiting for their signal to stop the traffic and wave the motorcades through.

Amidst all of this, the campaigns of the other parties are difficult to find. None have a single billboard; their signs are small, mostly at the outskirts of the city, by the side of dusty roads. Some have taken to parking tuk-tuks decorated with flags and equipped with loudspeakers that blast recorded campaign speeches by their leaders towards the passers-by. Their processions have dramatically fewer supporters and the authorities are less likely to support their way through the city’s dense traffic, often leading to the campaign processions being cut into smaller and smaller groups of supporters.

In 1993, cognisant of the CPP’s relative wealth and reach even at that time, UNTAC tried to level the playing field by creating a radio station and then distributing radios in the provinces. One might assume that with the advent of social media and the intense popularity of Facebook in Cambodia the smaller parties could make up for much of the financial, material, and organisational limitations of their campaigns by reaching out to their supporters online. Yet, the government’s announcement to monitor social media ahead of the elections has spooked many and it is almost as quiet and monotonous on the web as it is in the streets of Phnom Penh.

Despite these restrictions and regardless of the media used, rumours travel fast in every era. To express their concerns and ask for advice in the run-up to the 1993 elections listeners from around the country wrote to the UNTAC radio station, which sometimes received several hundred letters a day. During a special program, selected letters would be read and answered on air. People had heard of magic pens or spy drones, and contacted UNTAC for advice.

Similar stories circulate today. Smartphones and their integrated cameras make it unnecessary to imagine more elaborate methods of surveillance inside the ballot box, but the dominant themes of those rumours remain the same: people worry about the government’s ability to compromise the secrecy of the vote.

Which brings us to one last point: the current preoccupation with the total number of votes cast. During a televised statement in 1993, In Tam, the leader of the Democratic Party, urged his fellow people to go and vote to guarantee that Cambodia would no longer be isolated:

“Please participate in the elections; so that there are 90 percent or even more, so that they can see that we want to be a country that obeys the law and lives under the rule of law… Today they regard us as people living under the rule of the jungle, today there is nobody who recognises us; so if we do not all go to the elections, if we can’t be bothered to vote, then we will continue being a country that is excluded from the global community, so mobilise everything there is.”

And indeed, 90% did turn out, providing observers with the key element of their success story—despite the fact that both before and after the ballot it was business as usual and power-play and bargaining, not the will of the people, determined the end result.

Today, Sam Rainsy and his supporters urge the Cambodian people to stay at home to demonstrate that democracy can survive. Those who must go, they say, should spoil their ballots. They have dismissed all other parties as puppets or traitors and will claim every vote not cast for any party.

It is likely because of the tendency of the former CNRP members to bring up the Paris Peace Agreements, in their appeals from abroad, that people continue to regularly bring up UNTAC themselves: “they [UNTAC] installed the two prime ministers and then just left”, a shop owner said yesterday. A few days earlier she had also noted that “nobody will come to help because they already spent so much money then”.

Many commentators have loudly declared these elections “a farce”, “already over”, and “history” weeks before the polls have opened. And while it is true that Hun Sen is not going to disappear from the world stage by means of this vote, such statements are dismissive of those who are still grappling with the question of what the right decision under these difficult circumstances is.

To those people, who had neither the luxury to learn about the country’s history in libraries or archives, nor the convenience to observe and comment from the sidelines, it is the memory of another election that looms large: that of 1998 and the clashes leading up to it that turned Phnom Penh once again into a war zone.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, Hun Sen’s government has conducted riot training and provided new equipment to officers around the country. Two days before the vote people are wondering: is the current suspense the proverbial silence before storm, or is it the silence before the silence? And what is worse? “We have stocked up on dry noodles, just in case”, a market vendor said.

Looking back, it becomes painfully obvious that not only are Cambodia’s elections flawed, they are also a flawed vehicle to trace political change in Cambodia. To those still committed to peaceful change, the simplistic tales of “birth” and “death” of democracy are meaningless. Cambodians will, as one party official said, just continue to use and engage whatever space remains. “It is important for us as Khmer, the leaders and the citizens, we must try ourselves, trust in ourselves and hope. We cannot give up. If we give up, if we think it is impossible, if we only think of losing, who is going to help us?”

#Southeast Asia #Cambodia #Politics #General Elections

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awajid673-blog · 8 years ago

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DIY guide: How to add new tech to old cars

For those of you jealous of all the cool tech in the new cars my colleague Bill Howard gets to write about, there are lots of alternatives for adding technology to your current car. In most cases, add-ons aren’t as slick, or as powerful, as the versions you can get if you go all-in for a new vehicle. But they’re a lot less expensive, and some are quite effective. Done correctly, aftermarket solutions can even more flexible and future-proof than OEM systems. Remember when car phones were built into vehicles, and they got old really fast? Or when navigation systems all got built in and they got old really fast? Now, most of us use our smartphones for both of those functions — tied into our cars. Many of the add-ons we’ll look at in this article also leverage your smartphone, while others take advantage of the rapid pace of change and decrease in cost of consumer technologies. Dash cams

Nearly every day we are treated to a viral video of some sort recorded by a car-mounted camera. Whether it is a traffic accident, an encounter with police, or simply a shocking event that randomly unfolded in front of a car (several include plane crashes), they have helped fuel dramatic growth in dash-mounted and windshield-mounted cameras (e.g. dash cams). First generation cameras were pretty straightforward, recording either constantly, or when a button was pushed. If your smartphone was mounted appropriately, you could even mimic one using a simple app. As the market for simple cameras has saturated, vendors have begun to layer on additional features to help differentiate their offerings. GPS allows many current dash cams to provide speed and red light camera alerts, as well as other location-specific information. It also allows them to estimate your vehicle’s speed, which is a key element in layering on driver safety functions. Combined with a gyroscope for sensing force, units like the Thinkware X550 that I road-tested can also be certain to record impact events — even if you don’t have continuous recording turned on. One additional tweak Thinkware has added to the X550 is that impact footage is recorded on both the SD card and internal memory, providing redundancy in the event the camera is damaged in the collision. Our local auto-add-on dealer and installer also recommends Blackvue as a well-built, reliable brand of dash cam. Some dash cam vendors also offer a backup camera option. This is an attractive way to go for those wanting the additional safety of a backup camera — as these integrated solutions offer a smaller lag than the backup cameras solutions that rely on connecting directly to your smartphone. Typically these are wired to your dash cam, so be prepared for some DIY or paying an installer. Dash cam driver safety features leave a lot to be desired

As part of trying to stand out from the crowd, dash cam vendors have been racing to market with ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) features. They include Lane Departure Warning (LDW), Front Collision Warning System (FCWS), and Front Vehicle Departure Warning (FVDW). Those are the same terms used to describe common features available in high-end new car packages. However, that’s where the similarity ends. One obvious difference is that add-on systems currently on the market can’t actually control your car. The best they can do is warn you with a sound, so that you know to take action. Of course, that takes time — while you hear the sound, identify it, sort of the threat, and react. It also isn’t fail safe if you’re not paying attention or are incapacitated in some other way. Done correctly and reliably, even a warning can be a lifesaver, but a non-reliable system is essentially like not having one at all. Unfortunately, simple dash cam-based systems are not that reliable when it comes to safety features. Being based on a single camera that doesn’t have all the processing power of a high-end GPU or CPU, means that all the low-end and midrange dash cam products we tested produced plenty of false positives and missed lots of other incidents. In particular, driving along a mottled-sunlight-and-shade road frequently set off the Front Collision warning. Conversely, in many cases driving up to a stopped vehicle at a fairly high speed often didn’t cause a warning. The Front Vehicle Departure warning is a convenience feature, but often was triggered when cross traffic went by if I was first in line at a stoplight. If you weren’t paying attention and started to move based on the alert, it could be dangerous. If you want ADAS-like features, step up to a pro-installed system At one point, it looked like there would be a real aftermarket ADAS solution from startup Cruise Automation. However, GM has acquired the company, and is planning to use its technology for shared vehicle fleets, and not sell it directly to consumers. However, by using aftermarket camera and radar-assisted systems, you can get ADAS-type warnings in your current vehicle. Israeli startup Mobileye came out with some of the first products in the market. Its Mobileye 560 has been out for four years, but is still the favorite of professional installers. It has an integrated vision chip (and is very similar to the camera and processor that is traditionally built into the Tesla Model S). It’s much better at motion detection and object recognition than simple dash cams, but of course it still can’t control your car. Mobileye hasn’t come out with a new model for several years, although it does still do updates to the software. Instead it has been focusing on integrated systems for car makers. Like other dash cam solutions, Mobileye’s is camera-only. But by relying on precise calibration (meaning professional installation), and a more powerful on-board vision processor, it achieves significantly better results. It can even recognize speed limit signs. The downside is you’ll need a professional installer and a budget of about $1,000. Mobileye has proven particularly popular with older drivers, and with parents purchasing them for their children who are new drivers. Recently, Mobileye has been in the news for its messy breakup with partner Tesla in the wake of a crash in Florida, and Mobileye criticizing Tesla for deploying its products inappropriately. Competitor SafeDrive goes a step further by using a radar in its RD-140 family of products. The base RDR unit uses a front radar only, while the higher-end model adds a camera for lane departure warnings. Either one requires a pro installation, and will set you back about $1,500 to $2,000. Backup cameras Backup cameras are considered so important that they will be required on all vehicles sold in the US by May 2018. In the meantime, there are literally hundreds of aftermarket products, but all leave something to be desired. For starters, unless you have wires for a trailer, you’ll need to tap into your car’s internal wiring for power. Then, especially if you’ve wired to your tail lights (so that the camera and its app “know” when you’re backing up), you’ll have to wait for it to turn on each time you shift into reverse. If you opt for the convenience of an otherwise wireless install, then the camera has to connect to your phone over Wi-Fi, adding some hassle, and some lag, to the display. The lag, in particular, takes some getting used to. Pearl’s RearVision is the cat’s-meow of backup cameras

One backup camera system that stands out from the rest is Pearl Auto’s RearVision. First, it is solar powered, so you don’t have to wire it in at all. Second, the camera talks to a dedicated, always-on OBD-II adapter (that simply plugs into the OBD-II port found under your dashboard in all cars made since 1996). The adapter is powered by a beefy 8-core CPU — the same one used in the Galaxy S5. The dedicated connection and horsepower mean it can avoid some of the lag and connectivity issues inherent in systems that connect directly to your phone. It also has enough horsepower to run computer vision algorithms for 3D reconstruction and object detection. The OBD-II adapter in turn uses your smartphone screen for display. Eventually, you may also be able to see your engine data from the OBD-II port, but that isn’t a primary focus for Pearl. (If that’s all you really want, there are lots of standalone OBD-II adapters that will show data on your smartphone). Pearl’s RearVision uses 2 HD cameras: one a regular daylight camera, and the other optimized for Infrared and night vision. They transmit to the video processing software running on the OBD-II adapter. The vision software allows it to create a 3D map of the area behind your car, and provide obstacle detection warnings. In my time with a RearVision, I found both the simulated car-trajectory guidelines and the obstacle detection (technically in beta) to be quite accurate. I was also stunned by the quality of its images at night; seriously, it’s impressive. Currently, RearVision doesn’t notice cross traffic as well as systems with dedicated sensors built into appropriately-equipped new cars. However, it is an active area of research for the team at Pearl. When I spoke with them, they sounded optimistic that they’d be able to do an excellent job on this feature as well. Because the system is designed to be fully upgradeable (both the software on the adapter and the app on the phone), this is the type of capability they will be able to roll out to all users. Because the Pearl isn’t wired, it can’t tell currently tell when your vehicle is in reverse, so you need to launch the app yourself to view the camera. Longer-term, Pearl has some ideas about how to harness OBD data to accomplish this. In the meantime, my solution is to dedicate a second phone (an old one) to the Pearl, and mount it near my center console. I use my main phone, mounted on my dash, for navigation and entertainment (via Android Auto). The only catch with Pearl is the price. At $500, this unit is several times the price of most of its competition. But if you have the budget, it is hands-down the best product in its category. It also saves you from having to pay for the installation of a wired system, so its total cost is closer. Plus, I expect it to continue to improve, which is not true of the typical backup camera.

I found it awkward to launch the Pearl app when needed, so I mounted an old phone to my center console and dedicated it to the backup app Add-on backup cameras with dedicated consoles If you want a system that minimizes lag, but don’t want to spring for a Pearl, then one with a dedicated monitor may be your best bet. For best results, running a wire from the console to the backup camera is needed, but many offer a wireless option. Some come as part of a more complete system, like the Magellan MiVue, or the Rand-McNally OverDryve. OverDryve is actually built around a tablet that can also provide navigation and in-car entertainment. One cautionary note is that most of these systems use proprietary interconnects, so you can’t mix and match consoles and cameras between brands. If you want to see more than just what’s behind you, ImageNEXT’s omniDrive provides a full 360-degree surround camera solution. Using four cameras on the corners of your car, it synthesizes a ‘birds-eye’ view — like that found on some new high-end cars. When omniDrive is available — expected to be in early 2017 — it will clearly require a professional install. The company also hasn’t announced pricing yet, but I am planning to get a demo when the company shows it off at CES in January. Where to start? Based on my experience with various devices and apps, a backup camera system is the most helpful for safety. A dash cam will get you video records, but I wouldn’t bother with anything less than a Mobileye if you also expect it to warn you about approaching cars or pedestrians. Separately, as an overall tech upgrade, getting a new stereo head unit that supports Android Auto or Apple CarPlay will upgrade your nav and entertainment experience over relying on your phone alone — although you can at least mimic the Android Auto experience with Google’s standalone app now. If your car has limited visibility out the back, or you get tired of swiveling your head completely around all the time, a quality backup solution is a great place to start. Check out our ExtremeTech Explains series for more in-depth coverage of today’s hottest tech topics. (Top image credit: Mad Max: Fury Road) Click to Post

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awajid673-blog · 8 years ago

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DIY guide: How to add new tech to old cars

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