By Allen Myers
The May 23-28 Cambodian election gave a solid majority of delegates to the opposition bloc of FUNCINPEC and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP). The governing Cambodian People's Party (CPP) appears to have resigned itself to this outcome, although it has called for an impartial investigation to what it says were widespread irregularities in the conduct of the election.
Is the CPP charge merely the excuse of a bitter loser, or is there substance to it? And what does the role of UNTAC (the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) indicate about the likely future for Cambodia?
The most significant single complaint of the CPP concerned the large number of ballot boxes on which the lock or seal had been broken prior to their being opened for counting. There were 492 such broken seals. The number of votes involved was in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps half a million — more than enough to have altered the overall result.
UNTAC said that the seals were broken accidentally during transport of the ballot boxes. Green Left Weekly spoke about this and other alleged irregularities to Pou Savath. Savath, a Cambodian now resident in Australia, is a member of the CPP who returned to Cambodia for four weeks from May 1 to assist the party in the election.
Savath counters the UNTAC explanation by pointing out that many of the boxes with broken seals were from Phnom Penh, and so were not subjected to long or difficult transport. And ballot boxes from rural areas were moved by UN helicopters, not by ox cart and bicycle.
Moreover, UNTAC barred party scrutineers from observing much of the election process. Savath attended a May 5 CPP election planning meeting which addressed a number of suggestions on the conduct of the elections to UNTAC. One was that all parties be allowed to have representatives present as observers
in polling stations and at the central collection point in each province. (Ballot boxes were collected at one location in each province before being transported to Phnom Penh.)
UNTAC initially agreed to this proposal. However, it changed its mind without warning on the first day of the election.
Another peculiarity of UNTAC's conduct of the election, Savath reported, was its insistence on providing only pencils for marking ballots. The CPP had urged that pens be used, pointing out that pencil marks could easily be altered or erased, but this was refused. Indeed, it was only after repeated strong protests by the CPP on the first day of voting that UNTAC agreed to accept ballots which voters had marked with their own pens.
Such incidents would seem less significant were it not for the fact that UNTAC's behaviour for a whole year had indicated a hostility to the CPP and a desire to ensure its replacement by one or more of the opposition parties.
As far back as last November, US Cambodian scholar Michael Vickery described the UN operation as "the Nicaragua-isation of Cambodia" — referring to the way foreign pressures were systematically combined with a right-wing guerilla threat to produce a particular outcome from a "democratic" election.
In Nicaragua, the pressure was exerted directly in its own name by the US government. In Cambodia, UNTAC played this role by systematically undermining the CPP government. This political sabotage of the CPP was probably more effective than whatever ballot frauds were carried out.
Savath described an example of the way this was done from the last days of the election campaign. Two CPP officials were fined US$5000 each by UNTAC in mid-May for a minor violation of election regulations (they had given UNTAC three days' notice of a rally instead of the required five days). From midnight on May 19 until the election was supposed to be a "cooling off" period during which campaigning was banned. However, that restriction didn't apply to UNTAC: for three days running, its radio broadcast "news" about
this "violation" by the CPP.
Meanwhile, Prince Sihanouk returned unexpectedly from Beijing and held what amounted to a campaign rally for FUNCINPEC in front of the royal palace on the morning of May 23.
UNTAC even acted as chauffeur for FUNCINPEC leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh (one of Sihanouk's sons), flying him by helicopter to campaign events around the country.
The UN's justification for such open assistance to the opposition parties was the claim that the CPP government denied the opposition equal access to the country's communication and transportation systems.
This charge provides a good illustration of the way the UN interpreted the 1991 peace accords against the CPP, according to Dr Helen Jarvis. Jarvis, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW, has been visiting Cambodia since the mid-1980s. She spent five months there last year helping with the training of staff at the National Library and conducting research on the country's information infrastructure.
"The peace accords were forced on the government", Jarvis says, "not by the military success of the Khmer Rouge — they were largely confined to camps along the Thai border. The pressure came from the Permanent Five of the Security Council, mainly China and the US, who were able to hold back international and United Nations recognition of the government.
"UNTAC maintained that the government of the State of Cambodia [SoC] was merely one of four equal 'factions' — the other three being the Khmer Rouge, FUNCINPEC and the group that became the BLDP. So the government was denied any assistance — it was even denied payment for services it provided — because that wouldn't be 'neutral' between the factions."
UNTAC wouldn't even allow Cambodians whom it had trained to drive to take government driving examinations, because this involved a small licence fee.
"But when it suited the opposition, UNTAC would demand that the State of Cambodia act like an
impartial government and provide government services to the opposition", Jarvis continued.
"So SoC was supposed to provide transport and infrastructure to UNTAC and the opposition, because it was the government. But it couldn't be paid for those services or impose taxes to support them, because it was a 'faction'."
This two-faced operation of UNTAC proved extremely disruptive of the CPP government and of its authority with the population. Late last year, as an "anti-
inflation" measure, UNTAC actually confiscated a supply of banknotes which SoC had had printed, leaving the government unable to pay its public service or army.
The CPP government would not have been so desperately short of funds if UNTAC had not allowed the Khmer Rouge to violate the peace agreement with complete impunity. With the government largely disarmed by the UN and the Khmer Rouge refusing to disarm, the guerillas were able to cut off the government's revenue from fishing and logging concessions.
The Khmer Rouge, meanwhile "are becoming the richest guerillas in South-East Asia", Chantou Boua told Green Left. Chantou, who lost her entire family in the Pol Pot years, currently lives in the US, where she is an associate of the Asia Resource Center in Washington and a member of the executive committee of the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge. In a telephone interview, she said that the Khmer Rouge "have been able to make $20 million a month from selling timber and gemstones" to Thai businesses from the areas they control.
Chantou is highly critical of the whole UN "peace plan". It started off by including the Khmer Rouge, which is not what the Cambodian people want. It was made up by foreigners, by the Permanent Five, and the Cambodian people were not consulted about it."
She describes the UN operation as "a complete failure" in terms of its stated objectives. "Even though the election took place, it didn't achieve what the plan was supposed to. The Khmer Rouge is still armed. Since the signing of the peace accord in 1991, it has been able to increase its army by 50%
and quadruple the territory it controls.
"The 'success' of the election turns the world's attention away from the fact that the Khmer Rouge are still there, hanging on to what they already have and increasing their power. I'm sure they are quite pleased with themselves and what they see going on."
Green Left correspondent Nick Johnson, in Phnom Penh, reported that, paradoxically, FUNCINPEC's links to the Khmer Rouge aided it in the election: "In a war-weary country, many Cambodians expressed support for FUNCINPEC in the hope it would draw the Khmer Rouge into the political process rather than fight it, as the CPP pledged to do.
"It was also argued that FUNCINPEC would return Sihanouk (who is close to Beijing) to power and thus encourage the Chinese government to stop arming the Khmer Rouge."
Chantou stresses the role of the UN in this process: "The legitimisation of the Khmer Rouge by the UN made some people feel that perhaps the Khmer Rouge were really not so bad. This big world organisation thinks that the Khmer Rouge are all right. They legitimised the Khmer Rouge, they include them in the peace agreement. What can the Cambodian people say if they are told the world thinks this is good for them? And so they begin to think that FUNCINPEC, which is aligned with the Khmer Rouge, is also OK."
The danger now, she says, is that FUNCINPEC will offer some share of power to the Khmer Rouge. "It is obvious that the alignment between FUNCINPEC and the Khmer Rouge is a close one. If they do bring in the Khmer Rouge, it's going to be a disaster."