Washington interferes in Cambodia's election
By Helen Jarvis
The Cambodian election campaign concluded on July 24; voting is to be held on Sunday, July 26. The Joint International Observer Group of government representatives — including Australia, Canada, Japan and the European Union — declared that the campaign was "broadly representative", refraining from taking a stand as to whether it was "free and fair".
Enormous pressures to denounce the whole electoral process were brought in the last weeks of the campaign by "the international community" (read the United States government).
Totally discounted were the many accomplishments of the campaign: 98% registration of more than 5 million voters; 39 parties contesting the ballot; equal television time of five minutes per day for each party; more than 11,000 polling stations, even in areas that were controlled by the genocidal Khmer Rouge up until a few months ago; teams of national and international observers and security personnel.
All this was countered with reports of violence and intimidation, including reference to the violent collapse of the coalition government one year ago.
Foremost in the efforts to delegitimise the electoral process has been the United Nations Centre for Human Rights, which announced on the eve of the poll that it had been notified of 189 incidents of violence or intimidation, including 18 deaths, since May.
These incidents are only reports. It is, at this stage, unclear how many will be confirmed, or how many were politically related, but that doesn't stop governments or media using the report to discredit the elections.
The United States observers announced that they would not participate in the report issued by the joint observers, but would issue their own judgment. Several days before the end of the campaign the chief official US observer organisations — the International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute, both of which have been actively assisting the major opposition parties — declared that the electoral process was inadequate.
In Australia we have been fed the same viewpoint. On July 21 on ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent, Evan Williams gave his final report from five years' reporting on Cambodia in which he presented Sam Rainsy (the US favourite) as the great democratic hope for Cambodia, while Hun Sen was the decidedly evil candidate.
The report included extended graphic footage of a bloody incident in which a grenade had been thrown into a roadside cafe. Williams admitted that there was no indication that the event had any connection with politics — it could have been the work of a criminal gang, an incident in a personal dispute or the deed of a deranged individual. Apparently it was included only to create a sense of violence around the election.
On July 24, Williams' successor, Tim Lester, boldly introduced his report with the background statement that "Prime Minister Ranariddh" had been overthrown in a military coup last year by Hun Sen.
The reality, apparently too complex for the ABC, is that Ranariddh and Hun Sen both held the rank of prime minister in a government coalition between FUNCINPEC and the Cambodian People's Party. Fighting between them erupted at least in part because of Ranariddh's attempts to form an alliance with the Khmer Rouge against Hun Sen.
Foreign Correspondent and many press reports have downplayed or totally ignored the racist anti-Vietnamese line being spun by both Rainsy and Ranariddh.
"Vote for the right person and Cambodia will be free; vote for the wrong person and we will be slaves of Vietnam" has been used as a slogan by supporters of both Rainsy and Ranariddh throughout the campaign.
They have followed another tactic, too, of challenging the right to registration of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese — regardless of how long they have been resident in Cambodia (perhaps several generations!) — and of people who proffered proof of identity issued by the pre-1993 government. In Phnom Penh alone, more than 1600 voters were challenged, including the daughter of a judge; only around 50 challenges were upheld.
In addition to racism, Ranariddh has played one other card — proclaiming that "a vote for FUNCINPEC is a vote for the king", despite the fact that King Sihanouk is supposedly removed from the day to day political process and has refrained from endorsing his son's campaign.
The Cambodian constitution, adopted five years ago at the insistence of the United Nations, requires a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly for a vote of confidence or no confidence in a government. It is unlikely that any one party will gain sufficient votes, so a coalition between two of the major parties and some of the smaller parties seems almost inevitable.