Page 2 of 2 Towards Hun Sen's Cambodia
By Craig Guthrie
Each member receives at least US$2,000, and those with high positions in the
SRP receive US$200,000," said Rainsy in a recent letter. "I am worried and feel
pity for those [defectors] who get cheated. After the election they will be
kicked out," he said. Hun Sen responded by saying that SRP defectors "are not
goods or animals to be bought and sold".
The SRP has been left meek, and hoping for a highly unlikely post-election
"people power" movement to challenge a CPP-dominated government. The SRP
campaign has revolved mostly around the now globally recognized opposition
stratagem of pointing to high oil and food prices as the incumbent government's
failure to serve its people. But both strategies seem doomed to failure: a
planned "mass rally" of SRP supporters against inflation
saw a mere 300 supporters turn out, leading Hun Sen to quip that a local midget
comedian usually has more people in his audience.
The punch-drunk party has also lost one of its more meaningful friends in the
trade unions movement, which has the power to mobilize hundreds of thousands of
garment and factory workers in a mass protest. The leader of the largest union,
Chea Mony - whose brother popular SRP-affiliated union leader Chea Vichea was
gunned down in 2004 - announced earlier this year the bloc was withdrawing from
politics. The decision almost immediately followed Hun Sen's announcement of a
$6 monthly increase to garment workers monthly salaries - bringing them to $56.
The loss of the trade unions - the largest organized sector in Cambodia - is a
double blow to Rainsy, who, along with Chea Vichea and Ou Mary, founded the
labor movement in 1996.
Opposition off the rails
Rainsy, a former minister of finance who was sacked for complaining about
corruption, has tried another political tack. In several well-publicized
broadsides, he has attacked the personal backgrounds of what he claims to be
former Khmer Rouge members in Hun Sen's government. He recently alleged to
supporters at a Buddhist ceremony at the Choeung Ek "killing fields" that CPP
stalwart and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong was once chief of the Khmer Rouge-run
Boeung Trabek "re-education" center, where thousands of diplomats and
intellectuals were interred before execution.
Hor Namhong rebuked the accusation, claiming he was instead a liaison between
the prisoners and the wardens at the camp and insisting that several of his
close family members were executed there. He filed a defamation lawsuit against
Rainsy, but the salvo provided little political capital for the SRP. The arrest
of an opposition-aligned newspaper editor who reprinted Rainsy's allegations
drew international condemnation, but hardly enough to improve the SRP's
electoral chances. Nor has international outcry over the assassination of
SRP-aligned journalist Khim Sambor and his son, who were shot and killed in a
drive-by shooting on July 11.
The other main opposition party, the royalist Funcinpec, has also disintegrated
in the run-up to the polls. Crafty, almost choreographed, moves saw the party's
past leader and erstwhile Hun Sen rival, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, ousted in an
inter-party coup. The move was orchestrated by Nhiek Bun Chhay, secretary
general of the party and a former defense minister. Funcinpec is still the
coalition partner of the CPP, but since the ouster of Ranariddh, has been
widely seen as a puppet of the ruling party.
Ranariddh was subsequently convicted for pocketing $3.6 million from the sale
of Funcinpec's former headquarters and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, a
move some have attributed to Hun Sen's alleged influence over the courts. He
fled the country in December 2005, and has since resorted to giving telephone
speeches to embattled supporters of his new Norodom Ranariddh Party from
self-exile in Malaysia.
In June, Ranariddh reportedly sent Hun Sen a humbling private note asking for
the return of his private jet. Meanwhile, his magnificent $2 million
colonial-era villa in the center of Phnom Penh has already been sold off by the
government to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia, which plans to turn
it into a carbon-friendly boutique hotel. Hun Sen has said Ranariddh will be
"handcuffed and taken to jail", if he returns to Cambodia and has blocked any
chance or a royal pardon.
The fledgling Human Rights Party, led by self-styled people's champion Kem
Sokha and backed by controversial former head of state Pen Sovann, is assured
of winning at least a handful of seats. The party may have carved a small
nationalist niche among the electorate, and like the SRP is known to have had
US backers. Sokha left his previous organization, the Cambodian Center for
Human Rights, under a cloud of scandal as 16 former employees accused him of
corruption and embezzlement from the US-financed group.
Despite Sokha's grassroots popularity, his HRP is not seen as a major threat to
the CPP juggernaut. Nor is the US seen as overtly supporting any particular
opposition party, as it has been perceived of in the past. Washington, which in
2004 threatened Cambodia with sanctions for lack of progress on trafficking
issues, has since given the nation a glowing report its latest human
trafficking report.
The US Embassy in Phnom Penh has commended the lack of violence in this year's
election build-up, though it reacted strongly and offered Federal Bureau of
Investigation assistance following the murder of Sambor. Washington has taken a
softer line towards Cambodia in the past year as China moves to increase its
local influence. After Chevron's apparent discovery of oil and gas, the US this
year lifted a 10-year ban on direct aid to Cambodia in February and re-started
direct military aid in May.
Assuming that the oil and gas deposits are actually there, an energy bonanza
would profoundly change the Cambodian economy and its terms of trade. Drilling
by a Singaporean firm began in mid-July and state and private companies from
China, South Korea, Japan and France are currently negotiating contracts
related to the find. Although the government is still awaiting a key assessment
from Chevron, estimates range from anywhere between $200 million to $2 billion
a year in potential revenues.
That should provide plenty of resources for Hun Sen to further consolidate his
political dominance, and if this weekend's elections produce the landslide win
for his CPP many analysts project, could signal the beginning of a new era of
one-party rule in Cambodia.
Craig Guthrie is a reporter for the Mekong Times newspaper in Phnom Penh.
He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.
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