Michael Batson

It’s a big deal when the world’s second most powerful political figure calls by and for Cambodia,a small country, it’s no different especially now, in this, Asia’s century. The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, arrived in Phnom Penh on a state visit, a trip that coincided with Cambodia hosting the annual ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) 2012 summit. Special preparations had been made in Phnom Penh for his visit and the holding of the ASEAN summit. National flags were flying along Norodom Boulevard, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, and along the riverside. Police be they federal green-shirted gendarmerie with their heavy weaponry or brown-shirted police with small arms, close off access to the boulevard with such regularity as to make commuting even more of troublesome, a process than reduces the locals to an even more powerless state, far removed form access to the powers that be. Phnom Penh was awash with 10,000 security personnel packing AK-47s and Glocks. Cambodian military vehicles – blackened Hummers and SUVs – uniformed soldiers in their camouflage, motorcycle outriders aplenty, demining teams and police of many types with plain clothes bodyguards surrounding the summit’s facilities. In Cambodia this can take a relaxed air with traffic police sitting under the Frangipani trees. To reduce traffic congestion trucks were banned from the city for the duration of the summit, though trucks in the capital are relatively few in