Cambodia’s election – a foregone conclusion?

Caption: Opposition leader Sam Rainsy is unlikely to win Sunday’s general election

The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) looks likely to return as the ruling party after next Sunday’s election and may well win enough seats to rule on its own for the first time. But the run-up to the polls has been marred by voter intimidation and dirty tricks, NGOs allege.

Like other authoritarians, Prime Minister Hun Sen seems to have ensured that, while the election will be relatively free and fair on the day, the outcome will have been all but engineered.

“The election process can be considered free in the sense that violence is down, people are obviously not intimidated to cast their vote and the administration (of the poll) is better,” said Jerome Cheung, country director for the National Democratic Institute (NDI). “It is what happens before the election that does not make it fair, including CPP’s total domination of broadcast media and intimidation of journalists and opposition.”

Other observers suggest the contest may be more open. A recent opinion poll by the  International Republican Institute in Phnom Penh found that 70 percent of Cambodians believe the country is moving in the right direction. The February 2008 poll also found that people resented the CPP monopolizing the media – some 72 percent said the opposition should have equal access “and they certainly don’t receive that outside of the campaign period,” said John Willis, IRI resident country director. Nevertheless, he believes, the election results are “certainly not a foregone conclusion.”

Cambodia has recently seen an influx of investment, but it lags behind its Thai and Vietnamese neighbors in economic growth rates, partly because of endemic corruption. It is one of the worst on Transparency International’s annual blacklist, with 72% of its residents reporting they paid at least one bribe in the past year. As a report in today’s Wall Street Journal suggests, “a more pervasive rule of law is needed to sustain the boom by making Cambodia attractive to blue-chip foreign investors who currently prefer countries such as Thailand or Vietnam.”

Opposition groups are pinning their hopes of an upset on the youth vote. Over 53 percent of Cambodian voters are younger than 30, according to the National Election Committee. “In past elections, the youngest voters have been more supportive of the Cambodian People’s Party than other age groups,” said the International Republican Institute’s John Willis.

But he is not confident that the ‘youth factor’ will be to the opposition’s advantage. “The majority of youth is in the rural areas and they are concerned with livelihoods,” Willis notes. “They want jobs and CPP is able to deliver them.”

Hun Sen was put into power at the age of 33 by the Vietnamese after they ousted the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge. A former Khmer Rouge cadre himself, the prime minister has declared that he will remain in office until he is 90. The health of Cambodia’s would-be democracy is unlikely to improve while he remains in office.

The country’s political institutions “remain subject to the control inherited from pre-1993 communist days, and are utilized to serve the interests of the ruling class rather than those of the people,” Dr Lao Mong Hay, senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission, wrote recently. “Although Cambodia has held periodic elections,…. its multi-party, liberal democracy has little substance.”