After learning from the development experiences of other countries such as Vietnam and China, the two rising stars in the region, I have questioned myself whether Cambodia has a vision for its own path of development? Many people here seem to be short term oriented rather than having long term vision. Many development projects such as road construction have been renovated over and over again because of ineffective management and sub-standard quality of the construction.

We should be proud of what we have achieved but we should not be hostage to our past. Development legitimacy with the Khmer Rouge benchmark is no longer relevant. We should be more forward looking: what we want to achieve in the next five years, ten years, or even one hundred years. Can we foresee Cambodia to be a developed country by 2030? Or do we want to still be called a Least Developed Country (LDC)?