PM’S history of electoral manipulation, intimidation and violence shows he has no desire to cede power to democracy - excerpt

PM’S history of electoral manipulation, intimidation and violence shows he has no desire to cede power to democracy

Brad Adams, Asia director | Bangkok Post | 20 August 2013

 

Many diplomats and officials from influential governments know little about recent Cambodian history, leading some to issue meaningless statements calling on all sides to respect the legal process, when the ruling party has total control over the process.

1993 Elections 

Brokered and then signed by the world’s great powers, the 1991 Paris Agreements ensured that elections returned to Cambodia in May 1993 after more than two decades of war and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. From April 1975 to January 1979, the Khmer Rouge ruled the country, then were expelled by the Vietnamese army. However, Vietnam then remained as an occupying power for the next 10 years.  The Vietnamese Communist Party installed a client communist party which later became the Cambodian People’s Party to run a one-party state. Basic freedoms were nonexistent and human rights abuses rife.

Vietnam identified a young former Khmer Rouge regimental officer named Hun Sen, making him the world’s youngest foreign minister at age 27 in 1979 and promoting him to prime minister in 1985.

China, the United States, Thailand and other countries made a terrible situation worse by providing direct and indirect support to the Khmer Rouge to fight a proxy war against Vietnam and its backer, the Soviet Union, and by imposing a crippling economic embargo against Cambodia.

The 1993 elections were designed to allow the world’s big powers to extricate themselves from Cambodia. Through the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (Untac), the UN was given the responsibility to organise elections, which were held in May 1993. Turnout was just under 90%. In a rebuke to the CPP, the opposition royalist Funcinpec party won 58 seats with 45% of the vote, the opposition Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP) won 10 seats, and the opposition Molinaka party won 1 seat. The CPP won 51 seats with just 38% of the vote.

The CPP lost despite election violence that killed more than 100 opposition party activists and candidates, a massive campaign of intimidation, and the control of most domestic media, although the UN had its own radio programming. Funcinpec and BLDP wanted to join together in a coalition government, but after Hun Sen and his party threatened secession of the seven eastern provinces and a return to civil war, the UN and key governments capitulated and pressured the opposition to cancel planned mass demonstrations in favour of the election results and instead accept a coalition deal with the CPP, with a view to reforming the system from within.

Funcinpec’s Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen were named as the world’s first co-prime ministers. But the CPP kept control of the armed forces, police, courts and National Assembly. In the ensuing years, the National Assembly was unable to act without CPP approval, even to change its internal rules, leaving Funcinpec as the winning party only in name.

The CPP then embarked on a successful effort to divide and rule Funcinpec, driving wedges between Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy, then the Funcinpec finance minister, and between Funcinpec and the BLDP, which protested the close relationship between Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen (something that Hun Sen may try again with opposition leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha over the next five years).