In 2002, signs of a possible shift in U.S. policy toward Cambodia have grown stronger. On the heels of the February commune elections, Senator Mitchell McConnell, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued a clarion call to conservatives in a Boston Globe op ed. “It is in America’s interests that the opposition win in 2003,” he declared. Lamenting the results of the commune elections, McConnell deplored not only the dominance of the Cambodian People’s Party but also the “poor showing” by FUNCINPEC. The latter he attributed to failure of leadership and lack of a coherent political message, forecasting “the twilight of Cambodian monarchists.”

McConnell also chastised the US State Department, which he judged “unable or unwilling to commit to the cause of democracy in Cambodia” by its handling of CPP leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen. He called for US support to the opposition (by definition, the Sam Rainsy Party) in the 2003 national elections, with both technical assistance and material support. Although his role in drafting the article is not known, it may be germaine that by February former International Republican Institute staffer Paul Grove had joined Committee staff. IRI has been a consistently harsh critic of the present Cambodian government.

McConnell’s broadside sought to redirect US policy in two ways. First, it represented a change in attitude toward FUNCINPEC, which the US has viewed as a significant force in the Cambodian political arena since the early 1980’s. More fundamental, it sought to move official American policy from a non-partisan approach of encouraging cooperation and reconciliation among the parties and broad movement toward democratization, to an attempt to engineer a pre-determined outcome. Under this definition, the 2003 elections will be free and fair only if they bring a specific party to power.



If the McConnell article was the announcement of a new policy, implementation was not far behind. In the foreign assistance budget process, the Senate Appropriations Committee put a hold on USAID funds earmarked for training and other election support for Cambodia, because proposed activities did not show adequate effort to counter the “structural advantages” of the government. The hold was eventually lifted, but the message was clear.

Nor was the impact confined to Capitol Hill. No doubt smarting from McConnell’s rebuke, the State Department levied two criticisms against the Phnom Penh government this fall. In October the Department issued a public warning about political violence in the run-up to elections, still nine months away. More veiled was Cambodia’s exclusion from the ministerial meeting of the Community of Democracies, held in Seoul in November. A US initiative, the Community invited 118 countries as participants, assumed to be democracies in form and function. An additional 21 countries were invited as observers, because they were judged to have made credible, if incomplete, democratic progress.

Although Cambodia is approaching its fourth election since the Paris Peace Agreement and has developed an active civil society, it was not invited to the Community of Democracies meeting, either as a participant or an observer. The State Department 2001 Human Rights Report for Cambodia, released only days before the McConnell op ed was published, had concluded that, despite some irregularities, the last Cambodian national election, in 1998, “appeared to reflect the will of the electorate.” The report also concluded that the government generally respects freedom of expression and freedom of religion, two markers considered important for civil society. If Department officials noticed a contradiction between assessment and action in this case, they made no effort to resolve it.

Cambodia’s omission from the meeting is all the more puzzling in light of invitations extended to some other countries. Some full participants (such as East Timor) have very new untested political systems while others (such as Nepal) have suffered recent backsliding in democracy. In the observer group, some countries (such as Afghanistan) have yet to hold their first national elections, while others (Algeria, Egypt) have had static, semi-authoritarian systems for decades. Very few, if any, of the observer countries have civil societies as vigorous as Cambodia’s. To underscore this slight, Sam Rainsy circulated an address to the Community of Democracies meeting applauding Cambodia’s omission.

Although it is a not a government agency, within the past year IRI’s own approach to Cambodia appears to have made a similar shift. In public fora, IRI staff have been increasingly critical of FUNCINPEC, which the Institute once supported. In recent weeks, moreover, FUNCINPEC officials have alleged that IRI is moving beyond partisanism to political insurgency. A November 13 Associated Press story reports that Prince Norodom Ranariddh, FUNCINPEC leader, has charged IRI with attempting to persuade party officials to switch to the Sam Rainsy Party. If true, IRI’s role in Cambodia has moved from campaign adviser to campaign manager, and its program from political assistance to political operation.

A partisan approach to foreign elections is not unprecedented in US foreign policy. However, this strategy was more often a hallmark of the early years of the cold war, when the development of democracy abroad was considered to be less important than preventing communist control. In the Italian election of 1948, for example, the US intervened on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party when intelligence indicated that the Italian Communist Party was close to victory. However, the wave of democratic transitions, which culminated in the Cold War’s end, gave policymakers a deeper understanding of the complexities of democratization. Process was discovered to be as important as individual leaders, and the limitations of external actors became increasingly apparent.

The McConnell policy is an attempt to return to an earlier, more ideological, time, when political contestation in developing countries was reduced to a simple, two-part equation and political change was a matter of wooing or installing surrogates. In a country with as complicated a political history as Cambodia, however, an overly ideological and personalized approach can be a trap. Westerners often look for familiar reference points when they attempt to interpret other political cultures. They may canonize figures they perceive to be progressive, and demonize those they believe to be hard-line, exaggerating each as a result. Few politicians in democratizing countries live up to these ideals because they operate in, and indeed are the products of, political cultures which reflect an authoritarian past. More pragmatically, such a view ignores the likelihood that governing Cambodia will require a ruling coalition for several years to come. Coalition government tends to expand the gray areas of politics and mitigates against a black-and-white approach.

Two additional factors suggest that the new turn in US policy toward Cambodia is not likely to promote democratization. In a country still recovering from a civil war exacerbated by international participation, partisan intervention by a foreign power could add a contentious, even inflammatory, element to the political process. And ironically, a partisan approach may only reinforce the personal nature of politics in Cambodia, making it more difficult for power to be redistributed or for institutions to become more pluralistic. In the 2003 Cambodian elections, the US must keep in mind that political bias can too easily become a political blindspot.

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The Fund for Reconciliation and Development is organizing a team of volunteer international observers for the Cambodian national election on July 27, 2003, similar to the team FRD coordinated to observe the 1998 election.

For the third time since the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 Cambodia will hold a national election to democratically determine its government. International observers have contributed to the generally peaceful conduct of each election by adding their disinterested highly visible presence to the far larger number of observers mobilized by Cambodian NGOs and political parties.

The conduct and results of the elections will be carefully watched in Washington. If the elections don’t produce a victory for the Sam Rainsy Party, some organizations and political leaders will seek reasons to discredit the process. They will try to justify at least continuing restrictions on development aid and at worst fostering ‘regime change’ (see article on page previous page). It is therefore essential to post a significant number of impartial international observers to ensure that the assessment of whether they are conducted in a ‘free and fair’ manner is made without an ulterior or partisan motive.

For the 1998 national elections FRD coordinated a delegation of twenty-five Volunteer Observers for the Cambodia Election (VOCE) from the US and Australia led by Tony Kevin, the former Australian Ambassador to Cambodia. Most of the observers were former staff of INGOs, multilateral agencies or embassies with prior experience in Cambodia and were familiar with Cambodia’s culture and history. The remaining observers had experience working in Vietnam, Laos or Thailand. VOCE worked closely with the UN’s Joint International Observer Group that placed participants in polling stations throughout the country.

As with the 1998 observer team, FRD will try to obtain funding to support the costs of in-country travel and hotels. However, observers will at least be responsible for their own international airfare and meals. The elections are currently scheduled for July 27, 2003. Observers need to report to Cambodia several days before the election and remain through the counting process. If you are interested in being a self-funded volunteer observer or in supporting this effort, please contact Susan Hammond at FRD my mail or by email at shammond@ffrd.org or call 212-760-9903. She will need the following information: name, current address, phone, email, current occupation, experience in Cambodia and/or elsewhere in Southeast Asia, election experience, dates available, passport data.

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