Cambodians fear CPP may stage a coup if it loses in polls
Cambodians fear CPP may stage a coup if it loses in polls
By Armin Wertz
PHNOM PENH (DPA): The German embassy in Phnom Penh is reported by Deutsche Welle, the German short-wave radio station, to have warned that Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) may stage a coup if it loses tomorrow's general election.
The embassy is said to have expressed this view in a confidential message relayed to the German foreign office in Bonn.
Staff of the Buddhist Aid Association were somewhat surprised when their new chairman increased virtually overnight the number of observers his group was to send to supervise tomorrow's general election from 1,000 to 24,000.
Their surprise became alarm when, in the days that followed, more and more soldiers turned up at the organization's head office to collect their membership cards.
"I think most of these observers are from the army," said a member of staff. "I fear they will create difficulties on election day." When she made this comment she was still unaware that her new boss was employed by one of the closest associates of Cambodian strongman Hun Sen.
"We were not expecting such a fraud," said the head of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), who is now keen to be rid of these unwanted observers.
"Cambodia has the most liberal electoral law in Asia," enthuses Peter Schier of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. And, he adds, "the National Electoral Commission is doing amazingly good work."
After initial problems during preparations for the election and in the course of the election campaign everything has been running astonishingly smoothly for the past two or three months, Schier says.
The commission certainly has some very hard work to do. It is not just that supplies of ink were snarled up for days in Phnom Penh's red tape. Voting papers, ballot boxes and electoral registers had to be shipped to remote areas under the most difficult conditions.
The election organizers also faced constant attacks by isolated Khmer Rouge guerrilla units. Two people have been killed so far, and five more injured. The commission now faces an influx of election observers.
Thirteen Cambodian organizations of various kinds have registered 60,000 observers, most of whom are totally unqualified and closely linked with the military. "We hope to be able to clear out at least half of them," said an NEC spokeswoman. "We will certainly be doing our best to do so."
Yet the commission was forced to admit on Wednesday that it had already issued 43,000 identity cards for domestic election observers and that their number could increase to 50,000 by election day, Sunday.
They have also registered 648 international observers sent by the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), all superbly equipped with air-conditioned jeeps and mobile phones.
According to agency reports the EU has contributed US$11 million toward the cost of holding the elections, which makes it the largest foreign donor.
These observers will be joined by several hundred representatives of diplomatic missions and scores of observers sent by a variety of human rights groups and organizations from Europe and the United States.
The NEC is only prepared to grant them visitor status. "They will be issued with visitor identity cards that include neither their names nor pictures," says the commission's chairman. "They will be allowed to visit polling stations but not to compile official reports."
His staff do seem to have done the best they can to ensure free and fair elections. Yet the chairman is sure that: "There will be a lot of complaints. We will be accused of having done poor work. But that is part of the business. The winners will celebrate and the losers will claim the elections were a fraud."