...Thong Pol, 45, a local Funcinpec[Prince Norodom Ranariddh's opposition party.--- Ed.] operative, was found dead recently near his home village next to Phnom Penh. Both eyes were gouged out, his ear cut off, all his fingers chopped off, and his legs stripped of flesh below the knees. Hun Sen's police contend it was a suicide. Such farcical conclusions outrage human-rights workers. "The human-rights situation here is unacceptable and no one is prepared to say so," says Demelza Stubbings of Amnesty International.... --- Nate Thayer, "No Winners," FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 30 July, 1998..... Our findings and methods contrasted with those of a Khmer-speaking American human rights worker with six years' experience in Cambodia. Rather than briefly visit many polling stations, she and three companions spent much of the day outside one station in Kampot province. They identified the village chief and his subordinates overseeing the crowd. They overheard muttered comments about villagers and their allegiances.
The village chief said he would stay all day -- a violation of election rules -- to make sure things went smoothly and to fetch people who hadn't voted yet. What if they don't want to vote, he was asked? "Everybody would want to come to vote," he replied. Members of Funcinpec, the party ousted in last July's coup, reported death threats from the commune chief, who served as the poll security chief, if the vote didn't "go well." These people are no longer sleeping at home.
I do not know what I saw -- a well-run election with the fullest participation of the Cambodian people, or an orchestrated exercise carried out by an electoral apparatus controlled by the ruling party. Many things I saw have more than one interpretation. Observers more skilled than I saw intimidation. --- Ellen Bork, member of the U.S. Observer team and for Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, The Washington Post, 5 August, 1998
Event #130: Hard Stories
 TABLOID HART: THOMAS HART on the resignation letter that rocked Colorado: JONBENET DETECTIVE CRIES FOUL.
 G21 ASIA: ROD AMIS provides a follow-up to his series on the Cambodia election: Mirage on the Mekong.
 IRISH EYES: Guest Contributor DAN VANDEMORTEL returns to Rate Congress on Human Rights for Northern Island.
 POWERSSOUND: BOB POWERS on Jazz cornetist RUBY BRAFF, singer FREDDY COLE, and the WOODY HERMAN BAND.
A DAY ONE TWO-FER:  G21 DAY ONE: TODAY: G21 Alumnus CHUCK NYREN on the Music of the Road.
G21 DAY ONE: TODAY: BOB POWERS on the Top 100 That Wasn't.
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In Part Two, our interview with Lar Mundstock of the National Development Party, we attempted to bring the story into the present, even as millions of Cambodians went to the polls for the second time in five years, hoping to establish a democratic government.
With Part Three we went out on a limb and challenged the New York Times coverage of this story. Our letter to the Times can be found here.
In this segment, now that the "official" announcement of Cambodia's election results has been made, we shall look at the aftermath of what increasingly seems to have been a flawed, if not a completely sham, election and its implications for Cambodia and the region.
This week the National Election Committee(NEC) of Cambodia released its "official" election results, declaring a victory for strongman Hun Sen's Cambodian Peoples Party, as predicted by the G21. The NEC rubberstamped the UN and international observers' announcement that the election had been "free and fair." Hun Sen characterized his victory as "a landslide." There was an immediate outcry of election fraud and intimidation from the two main opposition parties, Prince Norodom Ranariddh's Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party, named after its founder and chief candidate. Both parties demanded that there be a recount of the voting. By Thursday, a partial recount had been completed, with no change in the results.
As of this writing, both opposition parties continue to call for a more thorough-going recount, and jointly continue to affirm that they will boycott the Cambodian National Assembly. Further, Ranariddh and Rainsy charge that the new equation for seating in the National Assembly now being presented by the NEC is not the one agreed upon prior to the election. Under the new rules, Hun Sen's CPP would be apportioned 64 of 122 Assembly seats(more than half) despite the fact that CPP garned less than 50% of the votes.
Further, Hun Sen has declared publicly that if both opposition parties go through with their boycott, effectively blocking formation of a coalition government, he will amend the constitution to reduce the number seats needed to form a government. G21 has learned that, privately, Hun Sen has already designated five cabinet positions which CPP will not give up to any other party in a coalition government.
G21 has also learned that, as soon as the announcement was made, government troops went to work attacking troops believed to support Prince Ranariddh. There has been sporadic fighting at camps along the Thai-Cambodian border all week. (Though, you wouldn't know it to check the reporting on Cambodia in the New York Times or the Washington Post.)
| This is a special G21 series on the July 26 elections in Kampuchea. G21 wishes to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Ms. Peg Thomas, Ms. Goni Blake and Ms. Betsy Burns of the Grotto Foundation, Minneapolis, MN, and former G21 Staff Writer Kim Carter for assistance in the research for this series. And we are especially grateful to Ms. Lar Mundstock of the National Development Party of Cambodia for agreeing to be interviewed about conditions in her country today. |
The feeling on the ground in Cambodia, G21 has learned, is one of intimidation and betrayal. Many feel that the election was a staged exercise with a foregone conclusion, and that the international community was fully prepared to declare any election outcome "free and fair" and fly out of the troubled country. Which is exactly what the international community did. Now that a "legitimate" government exists in Cambodia, the country's U.N. seat will be restored and its membership in ASEAN is predicted to be reaffirmed even before the September 24th installation of a new government.
But this blatant cynicism on the part of the international community is not going completely unnoticed. As Nate Thayer and Rodney Tasker report in this month's Far Eastern International Review("Unfree, Unfair") from the moment chief spokesman Steven Solarz declared the Cambodian election a possible "miracle on the Mekong," there was palpable anger among the Cambodian people. Solarz's cheery declaration was broadcast on radio, television and bally-hooed by the government-controlled press. Thayer and Tasker report, "....Indignation at the international observers was almost tangible on the streets of Phnom Penh. For example, after Solarz's "miracle on the Mekong" statement, broadcast on radio, a group of foreigners visiting Funcinpec headquarters had to be protected by security guards. Angry party supporters were convinced that the international community had colluded with Hun Sen to rig the election results...."
Meanwhile, one of G21 source's, Lar Mundstock of Cambodia's National Development Party writes:
.... I know that the world gets tired of Cambodia. But for me, my country of origin and my people are like a mother and child relationship. It doesn't matter if my child is sick or handicapped, I still love him/her and I am grateful to those who have sympathy toward my child.....
Dictators have staged elections meant to validate their control of national governments for decades. This is nothing new in the world of geopolitics. What G21 believes is new, cynical, and shameful, is that the international community should rush to judgment before ballots are even counted, and then wash its hands, Pilate fashion, on the consequences of its actions. This is a byproduct of the new mercantilism which dominates our "global village," and it should give right-thinking people chills. Not withstanding the cheery pronouncements of former congressman Steve Solarz, we have left a Mirage on the Mekong. It will come back to haunt us.
Feel free to send a copy of this article over to Seth Mydans at the New York Times.