The Cambodian People Have Spoken: Has the Cambodian People’s Party Heard?

Introduction

The 2013 national elections could be seen as a transformative event for Cambodian politics. Given its massive grassroots organizations, strong symbiotic relations with domestic tycoons and its control of state resources and institutions — particularly the security apparatus, the judiciary, and the National Election Committee (NEC) — the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was expected to win a landslide victory over the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP). This expectation was up-ended as large numbers of Cambodian people voted against the CPP, forcing the party to do some soul searching. This article addresses four points.

The first examines factors that led many people to expect CPP victory. The second focuses on reasons underlying the protest votes against the CPP and the CNRP’s popularity. The third documents the popular protests organized by the CNRP and the CPP’s responses that culminated in a political compromise; and the fourth addresses CPP’s reform efforts since the election. It then concludes by outlining expected trends for the coming years.

The Expectations

The CPP went into the 2013 election cycle with strong prospects. First, the economy was strong, growing at a rate of over 7 per cent propelled by the agriculture, textile and tourism sectors. The CPP controlled all government institutions from the national to local levels including the National Election Committee. It also had a monopoly over the media; major television and radio stations are either affiliated with or owned by the CPP. As the Cambodian state has been synonymous with the CPP, the party was able to manipulate public goods transforming them into partisan resources. The CPP has strong organizational capacity with networks that link the state and business tycoons to local communities, creating a massive patronage-based vote-driving machine. The core of this structure is the party working groups comprising central party officials, senior government officials, and sub-national government officials with funding from these government officials and businesses. These working groups contributed resources for the construction of schools, roads, bridges, and offered a variety of small gifts including cash, monosodium glutamate (MSG), clothing and reading glasses. Nationwide opinion polls conducted by the National Republican Institute found 79 per cent of Cambodians believed that their country was headed in the right direction. Top reasons for people’s confidence included the country’s infrastructural improvement.² Cambodia watchers generally believed that the CPP would win a comfortable majority even in the absence of electoral manipulation.

The Outcome: Cambodians Have Spoken

The 2013 election was a surprise for Cambodia watchers and a shock to the CPP. The official results showed that the CPP won 68 seats with 3,235,969 votes and the CNRP 55 seats with 2,946,176 votes. This was a significant loss for the ruling CPP whose share of parliamentary seats dropped from 90 — a two-thirds majority, the threshold for amending the Constitution. The CPP’s shockingly disappointing result can be attributed to a number of reasons. First, social stability and economic growth has been based largely on crony capitalism. The economic boom over the past decade has created a rich class — business tycoons, government elites and security forces — while dispossessing the rural and urban poor. Yet instead of addressing rising discontent over inequality, injustice, and corruption, the CPP campaigned on the memory of its battles against the Khmer Rouge, emphasizing the party’s role in liberating Cambodians from their genocidal grip and using the brutal regime as a yardstick for its own achievements. This message had worked in the past with the generation of Khmer Rouge era survivors.

Second, demographic shifts occurred within Cambodia which worked against the CPP. Cambodia has experienced a youth bulge since the end of the 1980s; by 2013 over 50 per cent of eligible voters were under the age of 25. While during the previous elections Cambodian youth were politically apathetic, in the 2013 elections many of them became politically exuberant. Unlike older voters, these youth were looking for new options. Although they acknowledge that Cambodia has made progress, they believe that Cambodia’s real potential is undermined...