Over the past four decades, Cambodia has undergone multiple transitions. It has moved from war to (negative) peace, from the totalitarian regime of the Khmer Rouge and the authoritarian regime of the 1980s to a hybrid political system with multiparty elections, as well as from a command economy to free market capitalism.
These transformations have been the focus of much debate amongst researchers and analysts: what is the nature of peace, democracy and development achieved in Cambodia? This question has always implied parallel and at times fierce discussions on the relevance, success or failure of international interventions. Ever since Cambodia experienced one of the first major peacebuilding exercises after the Cold War, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in the early 1990s, the country has indeed been the terrain of far-ranging international interventions in state- and peacebuilding, post-war reconstruction and development, and most recently transitional justice.
The elections of 29 July 2018 initiated a new round of these debates. They represented the sixth parliamentary elections since the UN supervised the first democratic elections in 1993 in the implementation of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
The winner takes it all
According to the preliminary results of the National Election Committee (NEC), the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won 76.78% of the votes. Based on this, the CPP has claimed all the 125 seats in Parliament, the 19 other minor parties receiving too few votes to win any seats. These alleged results reinforce the CPP and its Prime Minister Hun Sen, the longest-serving leader in Asia.
These figures do not come as a surprise since the only viable opposition was barred from competing. In November 2017, the Supreme Court dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), who had won 44.5% of the votes in the 2013 national elections and 43.8% in the 2017 commune elections. Its former President Kem Sokha remains in prison, whilst many CNRP officials, including CNRP co-founder Sam Rainsy, were driven into exile. The minor political parties were not expected to present any threat to the CPP, as they were too unknown or indeed government-aligned.
In such a setting, the main stake of the elections shifted from being about choosing a party, a set of political ideas or programme to the actual decision of whether or not to vote. This took place in a context of intimidation that in an ironic turn of events was facilitated by the long-standing use of indelible ink in Cambodian elections. The practice of dipping voters’ index fingers into ink, used to prevent anyone from casting ballots twice, allowed the CPP to intimidate those who would follow the CNRP boycott call and “clean finger campaign”, since they would become easily recognizable.
The turnout rate was therefore of particular interest to those following the elections. Whilst the number of registered voters decreased, the NEC announced a turnout of 82.89%, which is higher than the 2013 turnout of 69.6%. Yet, observers also followed the election results for the number of invalid ballots: the 8.6% announced by the NEC, about 600’000 voters, show a strong increase from the 1.2% of the previous national elections. However, these figures, along with the alleged number of CPP votes, cannot be trusted since the NEC is not an independent body, and conditions for free and fair elections were not met. The European External Action Service, Canada, Australia or Germany, as well as international organisations such as Human Rights Watch, all strongly criticized the elections.
The end of an already shattered democracy?
CNRP members, but also journalists and long-term analysts, have framed the 2018 elections not only as a “farce”, but also as signaling the “death” of democracy in Cambodia. The process undermining democracy has however started well before international media focused on Cambodia on election day. It clearly exceeded the known phenomenon of increased repression intimately linked to election cycles. Ahead of the elections, the ruling party proceeded to a crackdown upon every part of the political system with unprecedented scale, and with the extensive use of the legal system, whilst an independent and impartial judiciary is lacking. With the dissolution of the CNRP in November 2017, 118 CNRP lawmakers and senior officials were banned from political activity for 5 years. Some of the main independent media were closed down or sold, and journalists imprisoned. Since the 2015 adoption of the Law on Associations and NGOs, the space for civil society has drastically diminished. Intimidation has also expanded online, with increasing surveillance and prosecutions initiated for online activities, after social media had become a platform for dissent in the context of the previous national elections in 2013.
These concerning developments are reflected in the recent deterioration of Cambodia’s ranking in several international indices. Cambodia was ranked 142 in Reporters without Borders’ 2018 World Press Freedom Index, slumping from rank 128 in 2016. Transparency International’s corruption perception index placed Cambodia at 161 out of 180 for 2017. This is the worst ranking for countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, and places Cambodia third to last for the Asia Pacific region before North Korea and Afghanistan.
These developments consolidate the analysis of political scientists of a shift from competitive authoritarianism to a hegemonic authoritarian regime in Cambodia, the country thereby moving towards the one-party states of its neighbouring countries Laos and Vietnam. In this regard, the CPP mobilized practices reminiscent of other authoritarian regimes, such as the use of shadow election monitors or the use of taxation laws to silence independent media.
Empowering civil society in the context of increased intimidation
The debates on the nature of the transitions that Cambodia has undergone are not abstract for Cambodian citizens, as I observed during repeated research stays in Cambodia over the past ten years. In 2014, for instance, an elder man who had come from a rural province to participate in protests in the capital Phnom Penh, noted: “Since UNTAC until today, I don’t see true peace. […] [So far], it is only a picture to show that the job was implemented, that elections were organised in the country, but the democracy has not been really practiced, it is only on paper, not for the people. It is only one person who has control and power.” Also in 2014, a representative from a community facing land grabbing in North-Eastern Cambodia said that democracy means “a regime which takes into consideration the people in a more important way than the authorities. The authorities are only the representatives of the people, […] the people need to be respected.”
Such voices, who refuse the ways in which the meaning of democracy, peace or development are subverted in an authoritarian context, now strongly risk remaining silent. In this context, many observers rest their hopes on a fourth tremendous transition that the country has undergone: the demographic transition, coupled with improving socio-economic conditions despite inequality. The majority of the population today does not have own memories of the Khmer Rouge regime or civil war. It remains, however, that for those young people who had amongst their first voting experiences in 2013 and actively demanded political change, this year’s elections were a particularly disheartening experience, too.
There is therefore a need for concerted efforts to empower in particular the youth, but also to preserve safe space for civil society, to protect human rights defenders and independent journalists, and to think about creative ways and partnerships to support Cambodian researchers to continue to work independently in this difficult environment. This year’s elections also call for a reconsideration of how international interventions should be designed in this context to make sure that the voices of Cambodian citizens not only continue to be heard but can also participate in shaping the country’s direction.
