Yang Saing Koma wants to make sense of a political situation that some say is not salvageable. Sitting in a dim office of the Grassroots Democracy Party, behind an “organic” restaurant in Phnom Penh, Yang Saing Koma explains how in 1997, he helped his first farmer. The farmer ascribed to the widespread, yet mistaken, belief that to best grow rice one should plant many rice seeds together and flood the soil. Now Saing Koma is trying to grow a movement from far tougher soil as his party’s candidate for prime minister in Cambodia’s national elections on Sunday. In honor of the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, OZY is profiling opposition figures around the globe taking risks in the fight for social justice. |