Civil Society to Join in Election Monitoring

By Suon Kanika, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh
01 May 2008

[Editor's note: In the weeks leading into national polls, VOA Khmer will explore a wide number of election issues. The "Election Issues 2008" series will air stories on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by a related "Hello VOA" guest on Thursday. This is the second in a two-part series examining election monitors.]

Rights groups and other members of civil society will join election monitors as Election Day approaches, in an effort to ensure they are free and fair.

Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said the elections were important to all aspects of civil society, and his group has already begun its work.

“We have monitored from the registration period and will continue until after the elections,” he said. “Now we are monitoring the registration of political parties and their candidates.”

Comfrel will deploy 6,500 observers to monitor more than 15,000 polling stations.

Comfrel has joined up with the Youth Council of Cambodia to urge young activists to monitor TV and radio broadcasts, including the broadcasts of an “equity program” intended to give equal air time to each party during the election campaign.

Yang Kim Eng, director of the Youth Council of Cambodia, said his People’s Center for Development has created mobile education teams to help with the elections.

“We are taking part to monitor on Election Day because it is a very important day,” he said. “Moreover, we would cooperate with Comfrel to monitor after the election and would issue a joint communiqué to evaluate the election process.”

Democracy Activist Finishes Tour of US Political Landscape

Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
07 September 2007

Ok Amry, a democracy advocate for the Youth Council of Cambodia, recently completed a visit to the US, where he met several presidential candidates and learned, along with similar activists from six other countries, about US democracy.

His visit was a part of the International Visitors Leadership program, sponsored by the US State Department.

In Washington, Ok Amry, 29, said he learned about the American political process, from citizen involvement to the federal government's responsibilities.

In New Hampshire, he met US presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama, to learn about their campaign.

During the tour, Ok Amry said, he was impressed by his meeting with Kids for Democracy, a New Hampshire group that teaches children about the political process.

"With such organizations, young children are being exposed to the country's governmental process and democracy at a very early stage," Ok Amry told VOA Khmer in an interview before returning to Cambodia. "This is astonishing, as it shows that the country's foundation is strong, making the democractic system possible in the US."

"Unlike the US, many countries do not have a foundation for democracy, making a weak base for that body of government to exist there," Ok Amry said.

Seven other democracy activists attended this tour: two from the Philippines and one each from Japan, New Zealand, Tonga, Micronesia and Malaysia.

"This trip was very educational and influential for me on the democratic values of the US," Ok Amry said. "When I return to Cambodia, I will take all that I have learned and share this with the young citizens of our country. I will encourage young people to practice democracy in their daily lives and also ask the Youth Council of Cambodia to promote good citizenship throughout the country by creating democratic communities at home and school."

The Youth Council is a non-partisan NGO representing a coalition of five youth organizations: the Khmer Youth Association, Khmer Students Association, Student Movement for Democracy, Khmer Democratic Youth Association and the United Natural Khmer Students.

The youth, a segment of voters that can no longer be neglected

Photo: Youth Council of Cambodia

Tuesday, March 27, 2007
By Chheang Bopha Cambodge Soir
Unofficial translation from French by Luc Sâr

Click here to read Cambodge Soir’s original article in French

Long underestimated because they are submitted to the political ideas of their elders, the youth are starting to be involved in political life, and to put forward their demands to the candidates. This mobilization of the youth segment is being actively pursued by the Youth Council of Cambodia (YCC) NGO.

Since the beginning of the election campaign, Piseth and his friends did not set foot in the their classroom. Packed in trucks and wearing the color of the CPP, they crisscross the roads of the capital with older party members, shouting party slogans. For Piseth, this is his first election campaign and it entertains him. To top it of, his parents are not after him for skipping school. “My parents support the CPP, and they agree that I participate in the election campaign of this party,” he explains. In Cambodia, the majority of people consider that the youth, just like Piseth, vote like their elders and that they are not interested in politics, a field reserved mainly for the older folks. But, according to Kul Panha, the director of Comfrel, the election observation organization, “we note that, more and more youth are no longer remaining indifferent to political issues.” “In Cambodia, the children tend to follow the political choice of their parents. But, things could change with a better distribution of information on the different political choices promoted by the political parties.”

That is exactly what the Youth Council of Cambodia is dedicated to. The council is a NGO which claims to have 650 members, most of them are students in Phnom Penh. The NGO has deployed its members to nine provinces and municipalities to encourage the youth to take interest in politics. “They are confronted by joblessness, and they don’t have access to quality education, or to medical care. They must be aware of what the political parties are saying on these issues, and they should use their voting ballot to find an answer to their problems,” Mak Sarath, the coordinator of the NGO explained. He also calls on the political parties to pay more attention to this voters segment. According to the number provided the National Election Committee, the size of voters between the age of 18 and 25, accounts for 25% of the total number of voters. The NGO claim that this youth number is not negligible. “These youth are new voters, and no one knows for whom they will vote for. The political leaders should integrate this voters segment into their strategy. The parties must discuss about job, for example,” Mak Sarath stressed. His NGO recommends that voters should give their support to political parties whose candidates are not “corrupt and violent.”

Sok Chamroeun Phearak took an education class provide by the YCC. On April 1st, he will vote for the first time, and while waiting for the election day, he shares with his friends the knowledge he learned about the election on how to insert the voting ballot into the box. “Before, they said that the youth should concentrate on their studies, and leave to the elders to take care of politics. I do not agree with that. The youth represents the majority of the population and the more we are, the more we will be listened to,” the young man said.

Some are difficult to convince to go to vote. Yim Saroeun, a 24-year-old member of the Youth Council, tries to spread the good words among the youth in his Stung Meanchey district. “They are confronted by joblessness, lack of security, drugs, for a long time, and nothing has changed. So, some told me that there’s no use to go to vote. I explain to them that if they don’t vote, then there’s no chance for their problems to be taken care of by politics,” Saroeun said.

At 23-year-old, Kunthea, like her sister, are already among those who are deceived by politics. Both sisters have decided not to go to vote. “We don’t want to see the incumbent party winning again at the commune leadership, because its representatives are corrupt and they never stop asking money from us, without paying any attention to the development. We are more inclined towards the candidates from other political parties, but they are not competent. So we have decided not to vote for anybody,” Kunthea explained. No arguments seem good enough to make her change her mind.

For additional information about the Youth Council of Cambodia, click here.

The Apprentice Goes to Civics Class

Judges and contestants gather in the boardroom to decide who will be "going home" at the end of each episode of Youth Leadership Challenge.

A reality TV show brings U.S.-style democracy to Cambodia.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
By Suzy Khimm
Posted at slate.com

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—With her button-down blouse, plastic-frame glasses, and impeccable résumé—youth delegate to the United Nations, research assistant on rural economic development—Heng Socheata seems like an unlikely maverick.

"I didn't tell my friends to watch the show," the 21-year-old accounting student said. "If I won, it'd be OK. But if I failed, it'd be kind of embarrassing."

Socheata is among the young stars of a new reality TV show that quietly subverted the political orthodoxy of Cambodia's heavily censored broadcast networks—seven public and private stations all under the thumb of the ruling party. Part Apprentice spinoff and part civics class, the Youth Leadership Challenge replaces Donald Trump's aspiring moguls with 16 citizen-heroes who race around the capital collecting signatures for a neighborhood clean-up petition, producing a social-advocacy video, and soliciting donations for an orphanage.

In the show's inaugural season, which concluded last week, contestants were quick to adopt the true spirit of the genre: Reduced to tears one moment, they gave on-air confessionals the next. There have, for sure, been a few cross-cultural adjustments. Trump's trademark "You're fired!" was deemed too harsh for the Cambodians, two of whom were instead told to "Go home" each week. The prize for the last do-gooder standing was a trip to America, still the promised land for Cambodia's young and ambitious.

The program was the brainchild of the International Republican Institute, a USAID-funded and U.S. Republican Party-backed group that collaborated with the Youth Council of Cambodia to produce the show. IRI, along with its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute, was founded during the Reagan administration to aid U.S. efforts to promote—in some critics' parlance, "export"—democracy abroad, with offices now in Iraq, Haiti, and more than 40 other geo-strategic hot spots. Both groups still recall the spirit of the Cold War years, focusing on political-party development, civic mobilization, and election monitoring to promote "the nuts and bolts of democracy," according to Jerome Cheung, NDI's resident country director in Cambodia.

Of course, that the United States once bombed Cambodia in the name of such ideals isn't lost on this new wave of political missionaries. But Cambodia, unlike Vietnam, was forced to recover from Year Zero and the mass murder of nearly 2 million citizens. By 1992, when the U.N. occupation began, many Cambodians were ready to let in the phalanx of Western donors and aid groups at its door and begin the country's fitful transition to democracy.

Under the guise of its competitive theatrics, the Youth Leadership Challenge makes an indirect but unmistakable challenge to a government that continues to censor broadcasts of unfavorable news items, miniskirted entertainers, and portions of congressional hearings that seem threatening to the ruling party. In one high-profile crackdown, the IRI-backed Cambodian Center for Human Rights hosted a public forum that led to the arrest of CCHR director Kem Sokha and four colleagues on charges of defaming Prime Minister Hun Sen in late 2005, provoking an international outcry.

Barely a year later, the Youth Leadership Challenge featured a free-flowing debate about the national law prohibiting adultery, a bill mandating military conscription, and sex education in public schools. Between the frenzied yelps of the timekeeper, the contestants expounded, rebutted, and, occasionally, grabbed the microphone away from one another. "I don't know how we're supposed to argue against what we believe in," Socheata admitted in a fit of offstage nerves, moments before making the case for why women shouldn't be allowed to hold high political office.

According to local media trainer Moeun Chhean Nariddh, the program's unscripted antics have helped usher in "one of the most serious and political programs in Cambodia. … All networks are either censored or self-censored, as everything is controlled by or affiliated with the ruling party."

Local observers are still wondering how the kids have gotten away with it. For years, IRI had been commonly perceived as supporting the opposition Sam Rainsy Party—an allegation bolstered in 1997 when an IRI staffer was wounded in a grenade attack on an opposition rally he was attending, as well as by Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's long-standing calls for "regime change" in Cambodia. (Cynthia Bunton, IRI's Asia director, maintains that the organization has always been nonpartisan.)

Over the years, however, the ruling Cambodian People's Party has only continued to consolidate power, bolstered by Hun Sen's strong-arm tactics and an expanding grass-roots base. Many believe the SRP has lost its critical bark since its eponymous leader's return from self-imposed exile in France last year. The CPP accepted IRI's offer of political training for the first time in its history last fall, and IRI has been able to explore alternative means of cultivating a more open society in Cambodia.

"You have a hole in the boat, and water is coming through that hole," explained Thun Saray, director of Adhoc, a leading rights organization. "You have to plug the hole without making the boat turn over."

Certainly, the reality show's contestants hardly come off as radicals; they're the good kids, overachievers chosen from nearly 200 candidates. But the program has capitalized on their youth and ambition by leaning on another infamous U.S. export: American cultural mystique.

In a country where 70 percent of the population is under 30, Cambodians have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of the United States, as IRI's own 2004 poll confirmed. Bunton emphasized that the show's organizers "tried to tweak [the program] to be relevant to Cambodians." But the competition's big prize is hardly an afterthought. "That's why everyone wanted to be on the show—to go to the U.S.," said contestant Sorn Sarath, 24, who had already posted a photo of the U.S. ambassador on the wall of his volunteer-staffed NGO, the Student Movement for Democracy. The first Youth Leadership Challenge winner, Hing Soksan, 26, is another SMD staffer who introduced himself in an interview as an orphan and a future NGO officer. Unable to find a suitable job in Cambodia, Soksan hopes to use his trip to the United States "to learn from American leaders … and make Cambodia have more freedom than it has now."

At the same time, the contestants are hardly guileless consumers of everything Amerik. For them, the show's most outrageous task wasn't canvassing pool halls or handing out condoms on Valentine's Day, it was being criticized on camera. In a culture where "losing face" remains cause for shame, the judges dissected the contestants' leadership flaws—then had them turn on one another.

"In Cambodian culture, we don't say these things directly. We have to save face," said Socheata. "I've learned how to go after people directly. You have to be very good at seeing the weak points of other people, and you have to go back after them."

For one of the judges, that unrestrained public criticism lies at the heart of the show's edifying mission. "It's part of American culture—the competition of ideas," said Theary Seng, the Cambodian-American director of the Center for Social Development. "In a market economy, everything goes through a refining process, and the best idea or product will surface."

Trump couldn't have said it better himself.

Suzy Khimm is a writer based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She has contributed to the Christian Science Monitor and Los Angeles Times.