Hope Opposition Unity Likely Finished: Experts

By Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
12 May 2008

As party registration for July’s elections approaches, political observers say the likelihood of the competing parties to join in an opposition is unlikely.

The failure of unity has caused much finger-pointing among the parties, who will now have to run separately against the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and its coalition partner, Funcinpec.

“We are too late to accept a coalition,” said Norodom Ranariddh Party spokesman Muth Chantha. Those who said it was not too late were going to confuse the public, he said.

Human Rights Party President Kem Sokha expressed “sadness” over the failure, but said he would welcome a coalition. He blamed a failure of unity on the absence of Prince Ranariddh, who is running his party from exile in Malaysia and faces an 18-month prison sentence for embezzling if he returns.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, fresh back from a trip to the US in search of support, said he was ready to unite with the NRP or HRP, but he would not spend time discussing coalitions with newer parties or those with no political base.

Cambodia’s competing parties have in the past sought unity through coalitions, especially after general elections, but they have always failed.

Independent social analyst Chea Vannath said the recent failure was another good experience for the three parties to consider how they might work together in the next elections.

Coalition offers reveal opposition in disarray

SRP leader Sam Rainsy says he wants a mass coalition of all political parties who oppose the ruling CPP, but analysts say the pride of party leaders could hamper any potential merger. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/ AFP)

Friday, 02 May 2008
Written by Meas Sokchea
The Phnom Penh Post

It was only moments after his return on April 29 from a campaign sweep through Canada and the US that political leader Sam Rainsy declared his readiness to merge with Cambodia’s two other major opposition parties as the country races towards national elections in July.

Only such a marriage would have a chance at diminishing the power of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP), which observers expect will become absolute in the absence of the coalition government deals which have resulted from previous polls.

But Rainsy’s offer was not without conditions and accusations aimed at the very partners he is seeking, something analysts say reveals an opposition hopelessly at odds with itself and unlikely to loosen the CPP’s stranglehold over Cambodia’s political affairs.

“They do not have confidence in each other,” said Chea Vannath, the former director of the Center for Social Development who is now an independent analyst.

“They must merge together to compete with the CPP, but ... they cannot call for a coalition only as the election arrives,” she told the Post on April 30.

“A coalition is a very important force, but each (party leader) is too proud and will not agree to work together.”

Corruption, legal problems and even messy personal lives have come into play and Rainsy and leaders of the Human Rights Party (HRP), headed by former activist Kem Sokha, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s self-named political organization point fingers at each other, while at the same time pledging to support a coalition.

Upon returning to Cambodia, Rainsy demanded that the “weak points” of both of his potential allies be addressed or all three risked being “held hostage” by the CPP.

Kem Sokha, who has been at the center of a vicious whisper campaign over alleged graft, needed to sort out corruption allegations made by his former employees at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, according to Rainsy.

The Prince, in self-imposed exile since he was ousted as head of the royalist Funcinpec party amid a flurry of legal assaults, including one for adultery, must tidy up his private affairs, Rainsy said.

“No one else can help him with that,” he told the Post.

These comments have not gone down well, with Kem Sokha shooting back that Rainsy – the long-time darling of foreign pro-democracy campaigners – has no real commitment to form a coalition, as well as legal problems of his own that could jeopardize the opposition’s election chances.

The HRP has long pushed for a coalition with the two other opposition parties, but the plan is still “a failure,” Sokha said, adding that while he would unconditionally join Rainsy, he did not know if he could merge with the Prince’s Norodom Ranariddh Party, or NRP.

“He (Ranariddh) is different from me,” he said, accusing the NRP of shamelessly using a joint meeting with his own group to encourage defections to the NRP.

“This is a divide and rule policy it does not demonstrate the good will you need to form a democratic coalition,” Sokha said.

The disarray is, however, just more evidence of the CPP’s pending election landslide, according to government spokesman Khieu Kanharith.

“This is five riels being divided between three people,” he told the Post on May 1.

The opposition “merged many times before but those mergers were always broken – it is no worry to the CPP,” he said.

Officials at the NRP, while professing to want a coalition, claim that the two other parties simply waited until it was too close to the July 27 elections to realistically merge.

Registration for parties ends on May 12, and NRP spokesman Muth Chantha said, “When the election will arrive so soon why … hold press conferences about coalitions?

“We cannot merge now into one big party, it is too late. It is very deceptive to claim we can.”

Credibility remains elusive for the fractious opposition, said Koul Panha, executive director of the Cambodian election monitor Committee for Free and Fair Elections, and the most recent bickering does not help.

“The merger must be sincere … but do these three leaders have the will to do this?” he said.

A new political breeze in Cambodia

Apr 29, 2008
By Brian McCartan
Asia Times Online (Hong Kong)

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - A gathering coalition of smaller parties could give Prime Minister Hun Sen's now dominant Cambodian People's Party (CPP) an unexpected run for its money at National Assembly elections scheduled for this July.

The CPP has ruled the country either alone or in tandem with rival parties since the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1993 and in recent years has strongly consolidated its grip on political power. With its comparatively strong grassroots network, firm control over the national media, and recent successful economic policies, the CPP is widely expected to win the most seats at this year's polls. But perhaps not by the landslide many analysts had until now predicted.

To be sure, Cambodia's other main political parties are still generally in disarray. The Funcinpec party has recently been undermined by internal divisions, leading party founder Prince Norodom Ranariddh to cut ties and start up a new small political party bearing his name. Meanwhile, the major opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) still lacks the numbers and resources to alone represent a real democratic challenge to the CPP. The SRP party has likewise in recent years been plagued by internal discord over strategy and leadership.

Now, faced by the near certainty of another CPP election victory, talks have begun among medium- and small-sized parties of forming a coalition to contest the elections on the same ticket. Some political analysts believe there is some hope of success for such a coalition considering that the CPP received less than half the popular vote during the last general election in 2003 and the more recent commune elections held in 2007.

The 2003 polls resulted in a political stalemate, as neither the CPP nor Funcinpec managed the two-thirds majority constitutionally required to form a government. After a full year of political wrangling and paralysis, both sides agreed to change the rules to an over 50% majority and a new coalition government was formed in July 2004, which the CPP now dominates.

An estimated 23 parties contested the general elections in 2003; as many as 57 different political parties could contest the next polls, around 20 of which are expected to officially announce their candidacy during the April 18 and May 12 registration process. The three main opposition parties now negotiating the formation of a possible coalition include the SRP, the Human Rights Party (HRP) and the Funcinpec breakaway Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP). A united opposition would increase the individual parties bargaining power vis-a-vis the CPP and in an electoral upset could together form the next government.

The HRP, formed in July 2007 by human rights activist Kem Sokha, founder of the once influential and foreign-funded Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), cuts a particularly compelling contrast to the CPP. Sokha was jailed for publicly criticizing Hun Sen's policies and has successfully ridden that controversy, along with the CCHR's strong grassroots network, into politics.

The party claims over 10,000 supporters attended its opening congress and several well known political figures have joined its ranks, including Pen Sovann, a former prime minister of the early 1980s communist government. Kem Sokha has a grassroots reputation for fighting corruption and human rights abuses earned as a lawmaker in the dissolved Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party and later as a senator for Funcinpec before he left to create the CCHR in 2002.

With those political forces coalescing, there are already signs of a CPP rearguard defensive. Several of the newly created parties are allegedly in league with the CPP and have been launched strategically as political Trojan horses to penetrate and disrupt a possible united opposition front.

Democratic dirty tricks

The CPP has a long history of running rough and tumble election campaigns and there are growing accusations that the party is again using intimidation and threats against opposition supporters in the run-up to the polls. Senate elections held in January 2006 were criticized by local election monitoring organizations as undemocratic and slanted in favor of CPP-affiliated candidates. For the upcoming elections, 7,000 local election observers and 40 international monitoring bodies have registered to observe the elections.

Ou Virak, the current president of CCHR, believes that while overall the election environment will be better than previous polls, by international standards they still will not be free and fair. He claims that in recent months opposition activists have received threats and that a few have even been killed under mysterious circumstances.

Although there is not yet any hard evidence to indicate any political motivation behind the murders, Ou Virak sees the upshot in killings as "worrisome", particularly considering one of the main opposition parties is running under a human rights banner.

There has also been growing pressure on opposition members to defect to the CPP, particularly among SRP candidates. Where that doesn't work threats have been made against certain SRP commune chiefs and at least one, Tout Saron from Kompong Thom province, was jailed on March 18 on the some say trumped up charges of allegedly preventing an SRT activist from defecting to the CPP. The arrest of two other SRP officials is also being sought in connection with the case.

The arrest and warrants are already drumming up bad publicity for the CPP. Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a March 23 statement, "Dubious arrests of opposition officials months ahead of an election should set alarm bells ringing. This divide-and-conquer strategy is a well-known tactic of Prime Minister Hun Sen to subdue his opponents."

In the same statement, the US-based rights advocacy group said it believes that the CPP is conducting a "concerted campaign to coerce SRP members to defect to the CPP and punish those who refuse to do so, with the intention to split and weaken the opposition party before the national elections".

Hun Sen's CPP has long harassed the SRP, according to rights groups. In 2005, SRP member of parliament Cheam Channy was convicted to seven years in prison for what many considered an unsubstantiated charge of creating a rebel army. He served one year and was released after receiving a pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni. SRP leader Sam Rainsy, meanwhile, was convicted that same year for defamation of government leaders and fled the country. That intimidation follows on the bloody and still unresolved grenade attack against a Sam Rainsy rally in 1997 which killed 16 and injured 150 people. Human Rights Watch has alleged the attack was carried out by Hun Sen's own bodyguard unit, charges the premier has strongly denied.

Faced with such strong-arm tactics, few expect the opposition to actually win the July polls. Amendments to previous election laws mean that the CPP can form a government as long as it wins over 50% of the vote, rather than the previous constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority. In 2003, inconclusive poll results meant that neither the CPP nor Funcinpec could form a government until several months later an agreement to amend the rules was reached.

With an opposition coalition in the offing, it's unclear if the CPP will need to reach out to one of the medium or several of the small parties to form the next government. After a major split and a number of defections, the CPP's current coalition partner, Funcinpec, is not expected to win as many seats at the upcoming polls as it managed in 2003. The party currently holds 20 of the National Assembly's 123 seats.

Due to their historical antagonistic relations with Hun Sen, it seems unlikely for now that the leaders of any of the other major opposition parties - including the SRP, HRP and NRP - would be keen without major concessions to join a CPP-dominated coalition government. Whether their party representatives, many as in the case of the SRP now in the opposition for over a decade, share those views after this July's polls will represent the success or failure of a united opposition.

Brian McCartan is a freelance journalist based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.