Keynote Address in the Awarding Ceremony of Doctorates and Master Degrees to Senior Officers of the Royal Cambodian Armed Force for the Successful Completion of Study at the Army Academy of the Ministry of National Defense of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

20 April 2009

-         H.E. Lieutenant Gen. NGUYEN CHI VINH, Deputy Minister of National Defense of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,

-         H.E. Lieutenant Gen. NGUYEN DUC TE, Head of the Army Academy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and all delegates,

-         Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, National and International Guests,

It is my great pleasure and honor to be here in the awarding ceremony to award doctorates and master's degrees to the senior officers of the Royal Cambodian Armed Force after successfully completing their study courses at the Army Academy of the Ministry of National Defense of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  

Taking this opportunity, on behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia and all the people, through H.E. Lieutenant Gen. NGUYEN CHI VINH, H.E. Lieutenant Gen. NGUYEN DUC TE and all Vietnamese delegates, I would like to convey my profound thanks to the government, the military, and the people of Vietnam for their valuable supports. This further highlights the long-standing Cambodia-Vietnam friendship. Cambodia and Vietnam have stuck to each other both during peace and war times, during our battle with the Khmer Rouge to prevent its return and during Cambodia’s restoration and development processes. We are indeed strengthening the cooperation of our countries, especially by deepening our relationship as good neighbors and expanding cooperation. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government and the people of Vietnam for providing assistance in physical infrastructure, capacity building and health sector. 

Along with this, I would like to sincerely appreciate the Army Academy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and its management for exerting efforts to successfully trained senior officers of the Royal Cambodian Armed Force who will be awarded degrees in this ceremony. This outcome reflects determination and hard work of all Royal Cambodian Armed Force officers in protecting sovereignty, security, social order in Cambodia, rescuing people during disasters, and building their capacity to serve the country more effectively.

On behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia, I would like to sincerely congratulate all awardees for your brilliant success. I think this is another achievement in human capacity building of the Royal Cambodian Armed Force. This achievement indeed stems from hard work and tirelessly efforts of all awardees to constantly improve their capacity. Moreover, this achievement cannot be separated from close and historic friendship of Cambodia-Vietnam army and people who have always supported each other during both peace and war times. I think we can use this fruitful cooperation as a lesson to build good relationship with other countries in ASEAN, Asia and the world.

Education is a long-term investment. Investment in this sector will produce outcomes for the current and next generations and it is a determining factor for ensuring sustainable development in all sectors. This implies that education does not produce immediate outcomes like other sectors. It takes a long time, with clear vision and policy, before we can see quality results. Taking this opportunity, I would like to remind all educational institutions that the outcome of education does not only refer to awards, but the real meaning of this refers to quality standard and more importantly the transformation of intangible knowledge into real implementation to take part in development and protecting people. In this spirit, all education actors must have a clear vision, adequate physical infrastructure, monitoring mechanism, and willingness for research and development to succeed in this 21^st century. In this context, the Royal Government has steadily increased expenditure for the social sector, especially the education sector, and invested heavily to construct new schools and improve teachers’ capacity through “Priority Action Plan” in order to improve the quality and efficiency of education to support the implementation of poverty reduction policies and strategic plans.

As already raised by H.E. Lieutenant General the head of Army Academy of the Vietnam People’s Military, all awardees have presented their theses and answered challenging questions. Awardees’ research in military or national defense topics are scientific knowledge and beneficial for pursuing further studies.

Along with this, receiving awards today do not mean mission accomplished, but it is a starting point of your duty and further studies. As often raised in my previous recommendations regarding studies, I hope all awardees have conducted studies and presented theses according to the requirement of the Academy. It is actually reflecting the sole ownership of your knowledge, making today’s graduation a bright honor for yourselves as graduates, families, institutions, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces as well for the whole nation.

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces needs the qualified and experienced human resources to build a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, which is competent in fulfilling the duties to protect the nation, people, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. Therefore, doing researches and participating in on-site-training are the two significant and necessary factors; in training and developing the required qualified human resources. On the other hand, building the foundation for human resources development is still a key factor in ensuring the development and equitable distribution of economic growth because knowledge and know-how can improve the living condition of families and societies. 

Therefore, a good society is a society where people are living together, respecting and helping each other with no violence, no discrimination, and no division of social classes, which usually resulted from the lack of knowledge.

According to the above objectives and principles, we have to gather our joint efforts on the basic knowledge of building and developing a Royal Cambodian Armed Force on the basis of clear cut and deep reform. Along with the substantial works in a mission to protect the nation, territorial integrity and sovereignty and the people, I would like to provide a number of recommendations to be implemented by the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces as follows:

1.    Strengthen the combat ability and be prepared to fight in all fronts in order to protect the territorial integrity, national sovereignty and the people as well as cooperating with all competent authorities in regulating social public order, maintaining social stability, aiming to contribute to the improvement of national development.

2.    Try to enhance the living condition of the militants and build the military camps.

3.    Continue training the young generation military officers to produce well-qualified soldiers in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.

4.    Prepare the military glossary or index in order to set up a unified basis in preparing other strategic and legal documents to develop an efficient and sustainable Royal Cambodia Armed Forces.

5.    Control and adjust the tactics for national protection strategies to make sure that we have sufficient possibility in taking on the duties for the sake of land, water and air territorial integrity, especially the border line of the country. Give reflection and comments on the white book of national protection according to the current and prospective practical situation.

6.    Cooperate in transferring knowledge and experiences among senior national and international military in the training units of the Ministry of National Defense and the General Commanders in order to improve the training quality of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. 

Before ending, I would like to once again deeply thank the Government and Army of Vietnam, various training centers of the army and people of Vietnam, especially the Army Academy for having funded and trained military commanders of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces so far and I strongly hope that the Government, army and the people of Vietnam will continue to provide spiritual and material supports for the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, particularly on the training of soldiers to be more competent and responsive to the demand and duties of the current and future Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. 

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