A Tragedy Waiting to Happen

Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

This is not the time for recriminations or apportioning blame, but a public tragedy and grief of this magnitude demand or deserves at least a thorough, open post-mortem examination, if only to prevent similar events from ever taking place again.

The term ‘tragedy’ is usually used to describe a misfortune or a calamitous incident mediated through the agency of human practice or malpractice. This practice could bear the imprint of deliberate intentions on the part of human agents themselves, or be a consequence of sheer negligence or incompetence on the part of those involved or entrusted with the responsibility towards maintaining public order and safety. On the other hand, we describe those events as ‘disasters’ where the forces of nature or the will of God and/or spiritual powers are held to be their causes, although apart from certain natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions (unknown to Cambodia), it is increasingly difficult to attribute other seemingly natural occurrences to non-human agencies such as devastating floods, droughts, heat waves and so forth that could otherwise at least be better contained or alleviated through sustainable ecological or environmental policy and management.

In short, if a disaster lies beyond man’s power to manipulate or control, a tragedy is not only a disaster waiting to happen; it bears not only an air of inevitability, but is completely unnecessary and thus preventable, if one rules out the role of human foul play as stated. To suggest that the responsible authorities had not foreseen or failed to anticipate such an event would be to whitewash them off their direct charge and complicity over this tragic incident. In other nations that enjoy far better, more accountable systems of public administration, public safety can still be vulnerable to random acts of terrorism or official negligence, yet whilst these being the case, rarely are such acts or instances of negligence and gross incompetence allowed to go unpunished. Counting on one’s political patron to absolve one of the burden of guilt, or in Cambodia’s case, where might is right, being one sitting at the helm of a vast network of patronage system with all the protective cushion of enforced impunity, is not thought to be a meaningful defence or rational refuge.

The deaths of hundreds of revellers – many drawn to the capital from rural areas – in the stampede highlight only clearly the gross mismanagement and incompetence of public planners and relevant authorities in the staging of traditional festivals of this kind. One could tolerate the lack of medical facilities to deal with such large scale and sudden emergencies, but the failure to channel and manage the flow of crowds, particularly, along tight venues such as bridges and river front quays where overcrowding and stampeding had resulted in deaths and injuries in the past, is a grave and unpardonable abdication of public responsibility.

Where such venues cannot accommodate the traffic of large crowds of pedestrians, it would be rational to restrict and control the volume of that traffic by placing an exit and entry point at appropriate locations to ensure that the street or bridge does not become overstressed with expanding crowds by allowing pedestrians to enter and exit in stages or instalments. With people more sparsely spread in such strategic locations, the possibility for sparks of panic and stampeding would be drastically reduced, and even if there is a panic, there would be more space for people to evade being trampled upon and to avoid suffocating or fainting.

I believe also that a more responsible government in future should free up that narrow stretch of ‘river mouth’ area and preserve it for public enjoyment. I think it is an injury to the Khmer people and the public alike to allow casinos or vast hotel complexes to claim this space that had traditionally been one of the few places ordinary people living in Phnom Penh go to for relaxation and to take in the scenery.

With deep condolences and compassion for families of all victims of the stampede tragedy.