Cambodia’s 2013 Election, A One-Horse-Race?

On September 26, 2012, opposition leader Sam Rainsy wrote to The Phnom Penh Post the following letter:

CAMBODIA’S 2013 ELECTION, A ONE-HORSE-RACE?

In the article titled “Bring on one-horse race” in The Phnom Penh Post dated September 26, 2012, Prime Minister Hun Sen is reported as saying in a speech that an election without an opposition would be ''easy'' and that he will happily accept all the votes in 2013.

As we all know, nothing that is worth doing is easy. As children or young students, we don't, for example, retake the same exams year after year to relive the pleasure of passing them. Sportsmen will seek out the highest level of competition, rather than defeating the same old opponents. In our professional lives, we push, or are pushed, on to new challenges no matter how much we would like to rest on our laurels. We only ever achieve anything worthwhile when there is difficulty, or risk of failure, involved.

In elections also, it is so. In Cambodia, the main difficulty is to reform the National Election Committee, to make it a neutral rather than a partisan body. This has been recommended by Surya P. Subedi, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights. The government has refused to do so. For Hun Sen to contemplate an election without an opposition as a preferable alternative is to demonstrate arrogance and a complete disregard for the right of the people to democratic self-determination.

A thoroughly meaningless victory was achieved last Sunday by the ruling party in Belarus. The government there left the democratic opposition with no option but to boycott the elections after it imprisoned opposing politicians and created criminal records to prevent others from standing. The process was denounced by international observers for the sham it was. International isolation beckons for the communist-style regime.

The fact is that in terms of electing a legitimate government, a one-horse race is the same as a no-horse race. The public is cheated: the horse and rider succeed only in looking foolish.

Sam Rainsy

Elected Member of Parliament

President of the National Rescue Party (Cambodia’s united democratic opposition)