Election Formula, Disunity Bucked Change

By VOA Khmer, Pin Sisovann
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 August 2008

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Vote-for-vote, nearly half the Cambodians who cast a ballot in July's election sought to change the ruling party. But the lack of a unified opposing party meant that an election formula enacted since 1998 was against them.

About 42 percent voted for non-ruling parties, leaving the Cambodian People's Party with 58 percent of the ballots. But the CPP ended the election with an estimated 90 seats, with only 33 going to four other parties.

"The number of votes split into small parties is like throwing [votes] into the trash," said Thun Saray, president of Adhoc and head of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections. "The formula gives the remaining seats to the big parties."

While the CPP earned 58 percent of the votes, it gained 70 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, he said. The Human Rights Party, however, earned 6 percent of votes, but three seats. And any party with less than 4 percent of the votes was cast aside.

The formula surprised voters, who saw the opposition earn just under half of the votes but nearly three times fewer seats than the ruling party, he said.

"I think the Untac formula was better, because we are talking plural democracy," he said.

The formula was changed by CPP and Funcinpec following the 1998 election.

However, even with the current formula, had smaller parties joined into one ahead of the election, they could have pulled out more seats. With 42 percent of the votes with one party, about 40 seats would have been won, with the CPP earning about 70, and the remaining going to the highest average.

National Election Committee Secretary-General Tep Nitha said it was too early to comment on election law and seat allocation.

Meanwhile, Thun Saray said in order for a coalition to be effective, to affect change, they must form before an election, not after. Some Cambodians did not vote because they expected no change in July's election, he said.

A firm coalition with a clear candidate for premier was also necessary, he said.

Ex-SRP lawmaker Khem Veasna said he left the party ahead of the election because there was "no light of unity."

Kem Sokha, leader of the Human Rights Party, said the opposition had lost the election because too many irregularities overcame a climate for change that was not yet ripe.

"If we had united, the formula would benefit us as well," he said. "The Human Rights Party demanded unification before the election, and so did the Norodom Ranariddh Party. Except the Sam Rainsy Party. If the Sam Rainsy Party had had the same will, I think it would have become true."

SRP lawmaker Son Chhay said the main obstacle had not been unity, but unfair proceedings.

But CPP lawmaker Chiem Yeap said the overwhelming support of voters for the CPP found its way to the polls, no matter the formula or the coalition.

The opposition parties suffered because of their "tricky behavior," he said. "I think they won't beat the CPP for two or three elections to come. The CPP's political agenda is too close to the people."

Hun Sen eyes extension of long-running rule in Cambodia with opposition divided

Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Although 11 parties are geared to fight it out in Cambodia's upcoming national elections, the contest is all but certain to be a one-horse race.

No one seems to have any doubt that Prime Minister Hun Sen, Asia's longest-serving head of government, will retain his stranglehold over the country's politics. Least of all himself.

"I wish to state it very clearly this way: No one can defeat Hun Sen. Only Hun Sen alone can defeat Hun Sen," he said in a speech earlier this year.

Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party began almost three decades ago as a communist party that headed a single-party state. But as Cambodia changed into a multiparty democracy, so did the party evolve, and proved itself the master of the field.

Today Hun Sen — once a member of the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge — is crowing that he will bring the country boundless riches thanks to offshore oil discovered by an ultra-capitalist American oil company, Chevron.

In an hour-long speech at a recent development conference, he unequivocally told the audience he'll remain in power long enough to manage the expected windfall from the black gold, sometime in the next decade.

He spoke as if he had already won a new five-year term in office, though balloting won't be held until July 27. More than 8 million out of Cambodia's 14 million people are eligible to vote, according the elections committee.

An oil bonanza would further bolster Hun Sen's already unchallenged stature at the expense of the country's democratic freedoms, analysts say.

Once oil production starts, Hun Sen will find it easier to ignore the pressures to liberalize from foreign aid donors — on which the country is now still heavily reliant — and will instead curb freedom of expression, assembly and the press, said Lao Mong Hay, a senior researcher at the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.

Elections have become a "veneer of democracy," he said, adding that Hun Sen's expected victory would further empower "the present oligarchy composed of people in power and tycoons."

Through guile and threat, Hun Sen has run Cambodia since 1985, when he became prime minister of a Vietnamese-installed communist government.

A peasant's son, he has intimidated, outsmarted and co-opted his rivals, including those who have spent decades being versed in Western education and democracy.

For years, Cambodia was wracked by civil war between the government and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, whose 1975-79 "killing fields" regime left some 1.7 million Cambodians dead.

A U.N.-sponsored peace process led to 1993 elections that Hun Sen's party lost — but he managed to muscle his way into the government anyway as co-prime minister.

Less than four years later, he ousted his coalition partner when their rivalry turned violent and his forces emerged victorious after a few days of bloody fighting in and around the capital. His party easily won elections in 1998 over a divided opposition and hasn't lost a poll since. It now holds 73 of the 123 seats in the lower house of parliament.

Hun Sen has also presided over the fast growth of the economy, which remains small by international standards.

Having run the country for three decades, his party has built a firm grass-roots apparatus and can draw on financial wealth unmatched by its opponents. Supporters include some of the country's wealthiest tycoons, who regularly dole out cash to finance rural projects such as schools and roads, often named after Hun Sen.

The party has just three credible rivals, one named after and led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy.

The two other main parties are lead by Kem Sokha, a former human rights activist, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, whose former party booted him out for alleged incompetence — in part because of some political shenanigans orchestrated by Hun Sen's side.

But because the three parties lack a united strategy and instead pursue their own separate agendas for votes, they are unlikely to loosen the grip of Hun Sen's party, said Kuol Panha, director of Comfrel, an independent Cambodian election monitoring group.

"The imbalance will weigh heavier toward the ruling party. It can prevail at whim with its great strength due to the divided voices among the non-ruling parties," he said.

He said Cambodia's electoral environment is still far from free and fair, with the ruling party enjoying unfettered access to state resources and the tightly controlled broadcast media.

During the past few months, TV and radio stations have flooded the airwaves with coverage of Hun Sen and party colleagues inaugurating rural roads, schools and Buddhist pagodas — financed by cronies — and welcoming deserters from the Sam Rainsy Party.

Sam Rainsy acknowledges that Hun Sen's advantage of controlling the levers of state power make it "very difficult" for opposition parties.

"There's no strong kid on the block," to challenge Hun Sen's grip, said Chea Vannath, an independent analyst and former director of the Center for Social Development, a nonprofit social study group.

"I'm sure the ruling party will stay in power for quite awhile - with or without the oil money," she said.