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Cambodia: The tale of two
leaders
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
Sam Rainsy, the French-educated technocrat whom
Washington wants as Cambodia's new leader, has provided
his friends in the West with a valid alternative to the
tarnished regime of incumbent Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Now he needs to sell the idea to Cambodians, who
have already pledged their allegiance, in no uncertain
terms, to Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
The merger this week of the Sam Rainsy Party
(SRP) and the royalist Funcinpec (Front Uni National
pour un Cambodge Independent, Neutre, Pacifique, et
Cooperatif, or National United Front for an Independent,
Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia) under
Prince Norodom Ranariddh has consolidated the splintered
opposition camp for the first time since the end of the
civil war in 1991 - even if its two constituents are
barely on speaking terms.
Armed with a thick
dossier of fraud allegations from last month's general
election, Rainsy is embarking on a risky gamble to
convince the world that Hun Sen has forfeited his
mandate, by allegedly rigging the poll, to return as
premier.
The CPP captured two-thirds of the
vote, but fell just short of the majority needed to form
the next government on its own. Funcinpec has declined
an offer to return as junior partner, claiming that the
CPP won through stealth and subterfuge. In the meantime
Hun Sen also lacks the two-thirds of National Assembly
votes needed to confirm his own reappointment, leaving
Cambodia with yet another government of paralysis.
Rainsy and Ranariddh, who claim that the CPP was
able to fix the vote through its control of the state
electoral apparatus, intend to take their case to
sympathetic audiences in Western Europe and the United
States. But it is already clear that some are not imbued
with their choice of tactics.
Opposition parties
"want their minority vote to trump the clear wish of the
electorate. This is not a route for progress and
development, but rather a blind jump back into the
past", said Glyn Ford, who monitored the election for
the European Parliament.
The consensus by
independent observers is that the election did not meet
international criteria for a fair contest, even though
it was the cleanest and most peaceful of the three polls
held since Cambodia's transition to democracy.
However, the opposition is unlikely to win the
moral high ground until it has dispensed with its own
poll baggage. Both parties reportedly used underhand
methods to secure support, while Rainsy has been
indicted on a charge - which he denies - of buying
votes.
Rainsy, who started his political career
with Funcinpec in 1981, led a long campaign to expunge
that party of corruption before he was expelled in 1994
for asking too many questions. He had his payback during
the election, when the Sam Rainsy Party displaced the
royalists as the second-biggest political grouping,
after campaigning once again on an anti-graft platform.
Most Western governments, including the US
administration of President George W Bush, view Rainsy
as a better choice than either Hun Sen or Ranariddh,
citing his administrative acumen as finance minister
under the Funcinpec banner in 1993-94.
Low
government efficiency is a key issue with
development-aid donors as Cambodia endeavors to meet the
criteria for entry into the World Trade Organization and
attract badly needed investment capital. WTO delegates
are expected to endorse Phnom Penh's application in
mid-September, in what has become a critical issue for
exporters as they struggle to retain market share
against low-cost rivals in China and elsewhere.
"Without doubt this is the most important
international decision that has been taken in respect of
Cambodia's external-trade regime. Phnom Penh needs to be
able to reassure foreign investors that they are not
going to be disadvantaged from a trade standpoint if
they set up in Cambodia," said a diplomat. "Frankly, the
political standoff could not have come at a worse time."
Rainsy, charismatic, cosmopolitan and direct,
projects a more forceful investment persona abroad than
the dour and often uncommunicative Hun Sen, who has
never been happy dealing with Western leaders.
But some European governments are uneasy with
Rainsy's overtly right-wing ideological leanings, as
well as a tendency to trade cheap political points for
popular support. Rabidly anti-Vietnamese, Rainsy
campaigned during the poll for the introduction of
tighter immigration controls in an obvious attempt to
exploit Hun Sen's historic ties with Hanoi, which set up
the CPP after it had expelled the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
Previous racial outbursts by the SRP have had tragic
consequences for Cambodia's small Vietnamese community,
with indiscriminate killings and the ransacking of its
business assets.
Another miscalculation by
Rainsy has been his largely fruitless efforts to
identify the CPP as sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge,
largely because the government had offered an amnesty so
it could disband the former communist movement.
Diplomats reacted angrily to Rainsy's implication in
1995, never proven, that the CPP had "deliberately
sacrificed" three Western tourists who were killed after
they strayed into a Khmer Rouge zone.
"As I
understand it, [Rainsy] hoped to manipulate
international opinion against the Cambodian government
by implying that there was a conspiracy to pressure the
Khmer Rouge into killing the backpackers," said a
European diplomat. "This was plainly absurd and
irresponsible behavior for a public figure who has
ambitions to one day lead his country."
There is
little doubt who has the popular mandate at home, where
Rainsy's bluntness and abrasiveness, traits that were
acquired during long years of European residence, sit
uncomfortably with many Cambodians.
While the
middle classes have welcomed Rainsy's focus on clean
government and his strong external links, these are not
issues that figure prominently in rural Cambodia, where
the CPP nurtures farm incomes, and underwrites its
electoral support, with generous crop subsidies.
Growing conditions are improving, and so is the
CPP's feel-good factor. The winter rice harvest is
expected to reach 906,600 tonnes, a hefty increase of
83,500 tonnes on the previous season.
From the
rural perspective, as well as in much of urban Phnom
Penh, Rainsy's link-up with Ranariddh is viewed as a
marriage of convenience that will probably not last
until the next harvest.
Hun Sen has only 90 days
under the constitution to patch together a coalition
government, but that should be ample time to pry the
shaky opposition alliance apart and ensure another term
of office.
The royalists, routed in the election
and in danger of being swallowed by Rainsy, are clearly
the weaker link, with some of their legislators
reportedly planning to defect to the CPP if it looks as
if Funcinpec will miss out on the spoils of office.
"I expect Ranariddh will deal, but it won't be
on the same terms as before. We should not forget that
the CPP will remain the caretaker government even if the
90-day limit expires without an agreement on the
coalition's composition: so the pressure is all on the
opposition," said the European diplomat.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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