Nations pass the buck on Cambodia

By Abdulgaffar Peang-Meth

GUAM, United States (JP): A broad community of nations has invested great sums of money and thousands of personnel to bring a semblance of democracy to Cambodia. Five years ago, following the expenditure of nearly US$3 billion in support of a United Nations force whose mission was to bring stability to a country that had experienced war for more than a decade, the world declared Cambodia a "success story" and its general election free and fair.

A second general election has been held in Cambodia. Notwithstanding an array of technical and political problems, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the United Nations and a group of nations calling itself the Friends of Cambodia sanctioned the holding of the election last Sunday.

The outcome is predictable. Voters will come to exercise their franchise, probably in smaller numbers than in the last election when hopes ran high; ballots will be counted; international observers will certify that the election was largely credible; and the election winners will be declared and recognized. Another "triumph" of democracy will be validated by a world community.

There are two standards in viewing democracy. Americans, Canadians and Western Europeans generally believe in procedural democracy, by which voters go to the polls to vote on issues or elect their leaders. Another group of non-Western nations believes that it is not constitutional procedural democracy but substantive democracy that brings equity and justice as an end result.

In Cambodia, those favoring procedural democracy are joined by an array of non-Western converts of different cultures, and by Cambodia political figures themselves, to insist on holding an election that will probably yield another power-sharing formula of the 1993 type. Cambodians, who have a shallow democratic experience, must be grateful to have had an election at all.

More cynical observers will disdain this self-congratulatory spree. They will see the process as one in which the Cambodian people have again been used as pawns in a procedural demonstration that will legitimize a dictatorship about which most will complain for years to come.

Unfortunately, it is the cynics who may be closer to the mark. The end result should not be election held for their own sake. Elections held in a polluted social climate are worse than no election because they will inevitably give an air of legitimacy to the autocrat who has sullied the process in the first place.

While championing the value of the election process, many governments have simultaneously, if with less public fervor, decried the lack of a neutral political environment in Cambodia. Foreign government representatives, human rights organizations, top UN officials and Cambodian opposition leaders have appealed to the government in place in Cambodia to liberalize the procedures and policies that guide the electoral process.

In reality, the voter registration process has been ripe with intimidation, threats and coercion. Equal access to the state- controlled media has been denied to opposition candidates. The composition of the National Election Commission and the Constitutional Council are stacked against the opposition.

There are no serious investigations nor criminals brought to justice for allegations of human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings. A cease-fire on the ground has never been formalized. Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese nationals are allowed to vote in Cambodian elections while Cambodians abroad are not.

These and other abuses make it impossible for opposition candidates to compete fairly, guaranteeing a flawed election. Yet the international community, with the moral authority to weigh in against the usefulness of holding such a flawed election, has decided not to seek postponement of this democratic exercise.

In 1993, after nine out of 10 registered Cambodian voters risked their lives to elect Prince Ranariddh as their leader, foreign nations rushed to support King Sihanouk's fateful "no- winner" formula of copremiership to accommodate Hun Sen's power- sharing demand, even though he lost the election.

The UN had failed to follow its own plan to put a neutral interim government in place while preparing for the 1993 elections; Hun Sen remained in control of the governmental apparatus. The Cambodian voters' political will to elect their leader was betrayed by all those involved and by the democratic process in which they were taught to believe.

In 1997, Hun Sen ousted his copremier, Prince Ranariddh, in a coup d'etat. This July, the Cambodian voters are called upon to vote once again and become tools to legitimize a regime that came to power in a bloody power grab. The people are being betrayed once more.

It is naive wishful thinking to envision Hun Sen allowing the election to slip by him and his party. He has said he will not accept the result of the election if deemed as not free and fair by the National Election Commission which he controls, just as he said of the 1993 election results.

At play here is not only Western belief in procedural democracy (which brought bloodshed to the Congo and to Algeria in the early 1990s), but the desire of a group of nations to wash their hands of what they have made of Cambodia. They have resorted to an election to legitimize a dictatorship as if a short respite is in the interest of peace.

Forsaking fundamental principles and ideals that underpin human behavior will support continued injustice and oppression and diminish peace and stability in Cambodia and in the region. Do we condone a flawed election to achieve this end?

The writer, a naturalized American citizen, was a senior official of the non-communist Khmer People's National Liberation Front from 1980-1989. He has been an associate professor of political science at the University of Guam since 1991.