Cambodia 2017: Plus ça change…

While election years in Cambodia are always eventful, 2017 proved to be even more so than expected. While the months leading to the June commune elections brought the customary machinations and jitters, it was the post-election developments that dashed whatever hope for political change may have been engendered by the results of the last two elections. As the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) moved to consolidate its power in anticipation of the forthcoming elections in 2018, the country spiralled away from whatever measure of political openness may have been achieved in recent years. While election-related violence is not unprecedented, as forecast in the frequent references to "colour revolution" and imminent eruption of "social chaos", the crackdown against regime opponents in the months following the June elections was wholesale and decisive. The consequences affect not only the upcoming 2018 elections but potentially the next electoral cycle as well. The hoped-for democratic transition into which the international community had poured massive financial and political investment over the last quarter of a century appears more elusive than ever.

Still smarting from its precarious win in the 2013 elections, the CPP was confronted with yet another disconcerting outcome in the 2017 commune elections. Despite the ruling party's efforts to turn the political tide, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) successfully secured 5,007 council seats (to the CPP's 6,503) and 489 out of the 1,646 commune chief seats, a tenfold increase from their win in the 2012 elections. Though short of the 60 per cent that the party had projected, the CNRP did secure 44 per cent of the vote, compared to the CPP's 51 per cent. This narrowing margin is significant because it reveals not only a wide base of support for the opposition in urban centres but, even more significantly, an erosion of the CPP's political control in rural areas that have been the party's traditional base, where the majority of Cambodians live and where the ruling party has long-established political infrastructure. At 85 per cent of registered voters, voter turnout was impressively high, an indicator of popular optimism about the prospect of change, bolstered in no small part by the earlier performance of the opposition party, despite the preponderant power and repressive grip of the CPP.

These shifting terrains are not lost on the CPP. While transgressions against civil society and fundamental freedoms, particularly of expression and assembly,¹ have been unrelenting, the violent measures taken by the ruling party against its political opponents reached a new height in the months surrounding the June elections. Arrests and imprisonment of activists and members of the CNRP, many charged with participating in the 2014 popular demonstration that the government has labelled an "insurrection", preceded the commune elections in June. The systematic attack escalated after the elections, spurred no doubt by the CNRP's notable performance at the polls, culminating in the late-night arrest and imprisonment of Kem Sokha, head of the CNRP, on 3 September 2017, in disregard of his parliamentary immunity. Citing as evidence a 2013 speech he made to the Cambodian community in Australia in which he mentioned receiving advice from American experts, Kem Sokha was charged with treason, accused of plotting and conspiring with "foreign elements" to overthrow the government, and, through the CNRP, of inciting a "lotus revolution" in Cambodia.² Earlier, the government had introduced a law stipulating that parties cannot be headed by someone with a criminal record, which had already forced CNRP president Sam Rainsy, who is facing multiple charges and a $1 million fine for libel against Hun Sen, to resign in an effort to save the party.

With Sam Rainsy in exile, Kem Sokha's imprisonment essentially decapitated the party. Fearing their own arrest, a number of CNRP officials and party supporters have fled the country, many to Thailand. Others defected to the CPP. The final move to destroy the opposition came on 16 November when the Supreme Court issued a decree to dissolve the CNRP under the charge of attempting, with American support, to destabilize the government through a...