Cambodian Democracy Deferred

Cambodian Democracy Deferred 

Twenty years ago the world rallied to ensure free elections in the country. Today progress has stalled.

The Wall Street Journal | 27 May 2103

 

Exactly 20 years ago today, as the sun set over the village of Choam Khsan in northern Cambodia's Preah Vihear province, I watched as the final ballot boxes from that country's first modern election lifted off in a United Nations helicopter bound for Phnom Penh and the vote-counting process.

As the whir of the helicopter faded into the distance, Choam Ksam district's polyglot U.N. elections team—which included my Swedish election official partner, Pakistani peacekeepers, Ghanaian civil police, Polish military observers and dozens of Cambodian election staff—looked at each other in disbelief. Despite a Khmer Rouge attack on Choam Khsan 10 days before voting began, we had helped accomplish the impossible. Cambodia had pulled off a fair election.

Cambodians lined up for hours, in cities and remote jungles, to vote during those six days of polling in late May 1993. In the process, four million citizens made a strong statement about self-determination and their country's future. Norodom Ranariddh and his FUNCIPEC Party won the election with over 45% of the vote.

Once the euphoria of the election subsided and the U.N. moved on, however, the cutthroat reality of Cambodian politics soon took over. A former soldier named Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party, despite a second-place finish, began plotting to topple Mr. Norodom. The Khmer Rouge, who were never properly disarmed by the U.N., continued to attack civilians and government soldiers. In Choam Khsan, the post-election victory party lasted roughly six months before the Khmer Rouge retook the village and held it for several years.

In July 1997, Hun Sen ousted Norodom Ranariddh in a coup. While there have been elections every five years since, each has become less free and fair than the previous one. The next will be held this summer. Hun Sen is now one of the longest serving leaders in the world, unchallenged by the crumbling democratic institutions around him.

 

AFP/Getty Images

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen

Today Cambodia is a study in contrasts. Still extremely poor, the country has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world and is a major center for the sex-trafficking of minors. Yet Cambodia also plays host to some of Asia's finest hotels near the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap.

A little over two years ago, I went back to Choam Khsan for the first time to show my three young daughters this defining part of my past. While the village was once only accessible by helicopter for much of the year, it is now a daytrip from Siem Reap thanks to a Chinese-built road network (which, less happily, also provides jungle access for destructive logging operations).

In 1993, my team had used helicopters, trucks and ox-drawn carts to haul voting booths across our rugged area of responsibility in Chaom Kshan district. Worried my daughters would not believe how remote our outpost had once been, I was relieved when the turn off to Chaom Kshan was still a small dirt track. 

The village looked much the same, with livestock far outnumbering residents. As we walked its lanes, I found my Cambodian team leader Chea Polla. A dynamic and beautiful young woman—indeed the village star—when we worked together, she has had a tough two decades and today tends a small plot of land near her home. But unlike many of our local teammates, who died in land mine explosions or from gunshot wounds during the late stages of the war, my friend Polla is alive.

When I saw Polla she was saving money for a new home and raising her three children. Her son Nimol, who has since graduated from college and found work in Phnom Penh, is one of my most active friends on Facebook FB -0.82% . My own children were so moved by the trip that they want to live in Cambodia. Last week my eldest, a sixth-grader, organized a 26-kilometer walk with her friends across Singapore to raise money and awareness for water issues in the country.

Old Cambodia hands like me take some comfort in the promise of future generations. Sam Rainsy, the brave and outspoken opposition leader, told me in the late 1990s that while I should be discouraged that the village in which I had worked to bring democracy has gone backward, I also needed to realize that the seeds of freedom had been planted there, and all over the country, by free elections in 1993. Whenever they shoot to the surface, the international community must stand ready to nurture Cambodian democracy again, the way we did for a brief time two decades ago.

Mr. Entwistle served as a district electoral supervisor for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia from 1992 to 1993.