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Election Observers in Cambodia, 1998: What Can We Learn?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Extract
COUNTRIES RIVEN BY INTERNAL CONFLICT HAVE INCREASINGLY SOUGHT to resolve their conf licts and establish stable government by conducting elections, which outside observers can verify as ‘free and fair’. The first highly successful such venture, in Nicaragua 1990, was followed by election operations by the UN in Ethiopia 1992, Angola 1992, El Salvador 1994, Mozambique 1994, South Africa 1994, Haiti 1995, Liberia 1997 and Cambodia 1993 and 1998. The degree of stability and reconciliation achieved by these operations has varied, but the recent election observer effort, in Cambodia (26 July 1998), had a disputed outcome, which raised fundamental questions concerning the efficacy of post-conf lict election monitoring.
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References
1 Evered, Timothy C., ‘United Nations Electoral Assistance and the Evolving Right to Democratic Governance’, Monograph No. 15, The Center for UN Reform Education, Livingston, NJ, 10, 1996, p. 16 Google Scholar cites 30 cases of non-self-governing territory election missions by the UN, and 50 electoral assistance missions by the UN as of December 1993 (p. 36). Namibia 1989 was a former trusteeship moving to independence, and South Africa 1994 elected a new government and ratified a new constitution. Indonesia, in June 1999 was monitored by NDI/The Carter Center.
2 Memorandum, International Republican Institute–National Democratic Institute, ‘Terms of Reference for Cambodia Assessment Mission’, 13 July 1998, p. 2.
3 A sober assessment of the experience of the National Election Commission of Cambodia in the 1998 election by Kassie Neou and Jeffrey C. Gallup, ‘Field Report Conducting Cambodia’s Elections’, Journal of Democracy, April 1999, pp. 152–64, described ‘an administrative triumph, political failure’. Despite their disappointment with the electoral process for resolving underlying political conflicts, they saw the election as a ‘necessary stage in the country’s democratic development’, which had strengthened the civil society.
Another assessment of the 1998 election experience, Asian Monitoring Network Conference was published by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1–2 October 1998. It included commentary from eight election-monitoring organizations in relation to various elements of their recent role and future obstacles, as well as opportunities such as a regional organization and commitment.
In January 1999, the NDI and the International Republication Institute (IRI) published a detailed and documented volume entitled, The July 26, 1998 Cambodian National Assembly Elections, which called for a more cohesive international response to the climate of impurity still prevailing in Cambodia. The level of violence during the 1998 election was, thanks to the Khmer Rouge’s passivity, lower than in 1993.
4 See Brown, M. and Zasloff, J. J., Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1998 Google Scholar, ch. 7, for an account of the composition of the 1993 Cambodia constitution.
5 Memorandum, IRI–NDI, ‘Terms of Reference for Cambodia Election Assessment Mission’, 15 July 1998, p. 2.
6 These pretenders include his renegade son Prince Chakrapong, who tried in 1993 to lead break away provinces and form a separatist state.
7 Cf. ‘PR firm finds it tough to sell CPP’s softer side’, Phnom Penh Post, November 13–26 1998, p. 1.
8 Eric Paper and K. Dupont, ‘Sirivuddh urges green light for Hun Sen’, Phnom Penh Post, 13–26 November 1998, p. 1.