Cambodia’s elections won’t be free or fair. Here’s how to respond.

Opinion

By the Editorial Board
WP
June 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

 

Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, in Phnom Penh on Nov. 11, 2022. (Cindy Liu/Reuters)


Cambodia’s July 23 national election was never expected to be free or fair. Prime Minister Hun Sen controls all the levers of power, including the courts and the National Election Committee. Many prominent opposition politicians are in prison or exile. Critical media has been all but silenced with the shuttering of one of the last independent outlets, Voice of Democracy, in February.

But a lopsided win in a rigged parliamentary election is apparently still not enough for Mr. Hun Sen, who has held power since 1985. Last month, Cambodia’s Constitutional Council upheld a decision by the National Election Committee to disqualify the much-diminished primary opposition party, the Candlelight Party. That leaves Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party on track to win all 125 seats of the National Assembly, mirroring the result of the last such charade in 2018.

And to deal yet another blow to democracy, the election authority recently said anyone who urges others not to vote, or who casts mistrust on the election, is subject to a prison term.

What to make of this travesty?

Mr. Hun Sen has hinted he might be preparing to step down from the prime minister’s post while remaining party leader, and he is widely believed to be paving the way for his eldest son, Lt. Gen. Hun Manet, a U.S. Military Academy-trained general and commander of the Cambodian army, to succeed him. Lt. Gen. Hun Manet is reportedly running for a parliamentary seat from the capital, Phnom Penh, where the opposition would be likely to run strongest. Disqualifying the Candlelight Party was perhaps a way of eliminating any potential surprises.

Mr. Hun Sen might also have cast an eye warily on neighboring Thailand, where an upstart, reformist opposition party, the Move Forward Party, stunned the political elite by coming in first in parliamentary elections on May 14, driven by a heavy youth turnout and vote. The following day, Cambodia’s National Election Committee disqualified the Candlelight Party on the spurious grounds of not having filed the correct paperwork. The Candlelight Party, like Move Forward, is seen as appealing to educated urban youths fed up with authoritarian rule, and Mr. Hun Sen might have sensed the possibility of an upset.

Mr. Hun Sen, a Khmer Rouge defector and onetime Communist Party prime minister, has lasted in power for 38 years through a combination of guile and repression. Western governments have long countenanced Mr. Hun Sen because he represented a kind of stability after the violence of the Khmer Rouge years, the Vietnamese invasion and the long civil war of the 1980s. But lately, he has been given to anti-Western tirades, such as when he warned foreign diplomats last month against trying to interfere in Cambodia’s elections. He has also moved closer to China, economically and militarily.

The United States and several European countries have said they will not send observers to monitor this charade of an election. That’s the right first step. The Biden administration should also forcefully call out the erosion of democracy under Mr. Hun Sen. Cambodia is already the target of several U.S. sanctions, including export controls and an arms embargo. Foreign assistance, including support for civil society and independent media, should continue and deepen where possible. Tougher measures might not easily change Mr. Hun Sen’s behavior. But he and hopefully his eventual successor need to know there is a price to be paid for curtailing the Cambodian people’s democratic aspirations.