A
new political breeze in
Cambodia By Brian McCartan
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.
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