🇰🇭 It's not 'who wins', it's 'by how much'

Cambodia votes in commune elections

June 06, 2022

Hello friends!

It may seem counter-intuitive to send out a primer piece on Cambodia’s commune elections  — in which over 1600 commune chiefs and other local leaders are elected across the country’s 25 provinces — the day after the vote. 

But this isn’t an election that will have Khmer on the edge of their seats waiting for results to come in. Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodia’s People's Party (CPP) will, as always, take out the majority of the posts. When I asked friends about it in Phnom Penh no one was overly interested. 

I was in town when the campaigning really kicked off a fortnight ago. Even then, it didn’t seem too exciting to anyone. Like not quite a nuisance, but another obstacle to be confronted. A rally is for creative driving but not worth commenting on. Hun Sen and CPP banners and paste-ups are for blanketing the city but blend into the backdrop seamlessly. So seamlessly that if I hadn’t watched people pasting up A4 election materials outside shops and homes all day I would’ve assumed they’d been there for years. 

The Candlelight Party was a little more interesting. By the time I started seeing their prop around, there was hardly a surface left untouched by the CPP (or happily volunteered by the owner, perhaps) and tree trunks were the preference.

I kept a tally of the party banners I spotted on a six-hour bus between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and CPP was by far number one, followed way back by Candlelight Party. I saw a few for the Cambodia National Love party, the Cambodia Reform Party and the Khmer National Party. I spotted one — somewhere — for the League for Democracy, a socially progressive party, where the logo had been surgically removed. Seems to me it would’ve been easier just to remove the whole thing, but I’m not a meddler. 

I don’t want to sound dumb (I swear, I read all the books and asked all the questions) but it was jarring to be there in the lead up to the election, especially off the back of the Philippines’ national elections just a couple of weeks earlier. Maybe it’s just really driven home how varied the region is. It is bizarre that you’d have a bloc like Asean in which member states have such radically different political systems. Brussels could never. 

Anyway, we’ll pick this up later in the week with firmer results and analysis. Erin Cook

Cambodia voted yesterday. Around 9 million voters registered to have their say for communal chiefs and local leaders across the country.

In 24 communes around the country, including eight in Phnom Penh, the ruling CPP is the only name on the ballot, VOD English reports. CPP incumbents aren’t too phased. Pov Samoch, commune chief in the capital’s Phsar Depot I, is running unopposed.

“We don’t need to campaign much. But we’re not silent. We’ve invited people to go vote, even though there’s only one party, to express their opinions,” Samoch told VOD. Those benefiting from the rut say opposition parties have been unable to find enough candidates. Not quite, says Candlelight Party. VOD reports in this particular instance, the party’s would-be candidate was rejected by the local elections arm and later lost an appeal with the National Election Committee

It’s certainly a blow to the Candlelight Party, but not a shock to either the party or voters. In the last commune elections, held back in 2017, the opposition party Cambodian National Rescue Party, shocked all by taking out 44 percent of the vote. The not-exactly-squeaky-clean Supreme Court responded in kind by dissolving the party and leader Kem Sokha is looking at treason charges.  

This background makes an inspired campaign or electorate near impossible. “There seems to be no hope [for change], [parties] just stand for election, [voters] just vote for the ballot. The leader is still the same leader,” tuk-tuk driver Ear Seang told VOA last week. 

Still, the cynicism hasn’t hit everyone. Oum Savan is a high school teacher in Baribour Town, Kampong Chhnang province. He’s been involved in politics previously, serving as a second deputy chief for the CNRP following the 2017 gains. He had been devastated by the dissolution of the party but says he bided his time, feeling that one day a new opportunity will arise. When the Candlelight Party came on the scene in late 2021 — a successor to the Sam Rainsy Party of the 90s and 2000s and the CNRP of the 2010s — it was his time.

“I wanted to help people in my commune, but I didn’t know what to do. So, when I learned the Candlelight Party was coming back after they had held a congress [in November 2021], I had an urge to join them. I want to be back into politics to get the power to serve people,” Oum Savan told VOA Khmer. He’s certainly not the only one. This piece is a fantastic read on candidates who have dusted themselves off over and over and over to face the challenge again and should be read in full. 

The new party is a successor to opposition movements of the past, but it is focused less on exiled former leaders and on carrying the baton for them. "In Cambodia, politics is always personality politics and now it's not. This is the first time that we have no dominant politician's name associated with a political party — it's all grassroots," former Sam Rainsy Party senator and now Candlelight treasurer Seng Mardi told Nikkei Asia. 

The Nikkei piece flags that the most interesting outcome of the election (in which, I will be explicitly clear, no party except for the CPP can win) will be how a non-CPP vote has fared in the years since the dissolution of CNRP ‘which has essentially rendered the country a one-party state.’ 

It’s unlikely the nascent party will reach the 40 percent of 2017 grabbed by the CNRP, but anything at all could be considered a win. Writing for the Diplomat, Andrew Nachemson notes that CPP appoints both the National Election Commission and poll-watchers. Candlelight candidates and volunteers have reported harassment and intimidation in the weeks leading up to the vote, but who would be interested in following up on those complaints in an official capacity? 

“In terms of commune elections, 2022 is the most restrictive pre-election period Cambodia has experienced in at least a decade,” Naly Pilorge, deputy director of human rights group LICADHO, told the Diplomat. 

Nachemson puts it succinctly, if not extraordinarily bleakly: ‘It’s unclear how the Candlelight Party will perform; it’s hard to know what people think when they aren’t allowed to speak. But after 2017, it is clear that the CPP will never allow an opposition party to win an election.’

Further reading:

Mardi, Setha and a handful of other men started calling on former opposition politicians around the country. In cases of leaders who had died or were in jail, they contacted children or family members, relying on decades-old CNRP candidate rolls and sometimes driving for hours to remote provinces. 

The reception from local officials, particularly from those who had been thrown in jail and released, was overwhelmingly warm, Setha said.

“Injustice is everywhere,” Setha said. “They became so angry with the ruling party officials at the local level – that’s why they want to continue the struggle.”

Whether these elections mark the return of democratic norms in Cambodia will depend on how well the main opposition performs. International observers, development partners, civil society representatives and the opposition party hope to see democratic processes reemerge as a platform for political participation and a vehicle for a peaceful transfer of power but no one is sure if that will be the case.

Much also hinges on the CPP’s response to the election results. Concerns are mounting about how the CPP will respond if the votes are in the opposition party’s favour. Will the Candlelight Party be dissolved the same way as the CNRP?

Still, while many of the key characters of the Cambodian political world remain, the stage has changed dramatically in the past five years, says Astrid Norén-Nilsson, a lecturer at Lund University in Sweden.

“Domestically, the rules of the game have been changed at breakneck speed,” said Norén-Nilsson, a long-term researcher of Cambodia’s political system.

As Hun Sen consolidated power, it was not only the high-profile opposition leaders who were targeted. Criminal charges were also brought against members and supporters of the CNRP, while civil society found its ability to operate increasingly restricted.

Although Norén-Nilsson believes Candlelight could succeed in opening some political space, she says the dissolution of the CNRP and the non-competitive elections that followed in 2018 marked a total reset of the national dynamic.

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