Cambodian election in 2023: No space for the opposition
Cambodian election in 2023: No space for the opposition
WRITTEN BY PERLE PETIT
19 January 2023
After years of systematically undermining the electoral process and aggressively dismantling the opposition, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) is set to continue its quarter-century reign in the next general election scheduled for July 2023.
Despite Cambodia raising its international presence as the ASEAN Chair for 2022 and reviewing its foreign policy ambitions in response to the China-US power struggle in the region, little has changed domestically. Due to a lack of opposition, we can expect the upcoming election to result in another CPP victory, extending Hun Sen’s rule for another five years. Projecting regime legitimacy via elections no longer seems important to the controlling party, either domestically or internationally. Concurrently, international criticism of the regime has died down since reaching a high in 2017, with international democracy promoters like US President Joe Biden meeting with Hun Sen this year. However, the potential warming of relations with the West is having no impact on improving the political situation in the country. As a result, it is difficult to see how political alternation is at all possible in the country’s future.
Decimating the opposition
The ingrained capture of the country’s political structure and institutions by the CPP has been years in the making. Party loyalists are cemented within all levels of governance, in a system rife with political favouritism, nepotism, and corruption. Despite this stranglehold, the CPP suffered a high-profile electoral embarrassment in 2013, which marked the start of active, and continuing, repression of the opposition.
Therefore, as has been the case in Cambodia since the 1980s, power continues to remain concentrated in the same few hands.
In the 2013 general election, the self-confidence of the CPP was shaken by the outstanding performance of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Formed through a merger between two opposition parties with strong follower bases, the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party, the CNRP supposedly harked the end of years of bickering and infighting within the country’s fractured opposition. Holding the lead by only 4.37 per cent, the CPP was forced to accept that it had faced real political competition.
Following an equally strong performance by the CNRP in the 2017 commune election, the CPP retaliated by leading an intensive crackdown on the opposition, decimating any critical voices — political, civil society, and independent media, among others. A ruling by the (CPP-controlled) Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP on spurious treason charges. Before the end of the year, more than 60 per cent of CNRP parliamentarians had fled the country, with many others attacked, arrested, and/or forced to admit crimes and defect to other parties (that is, the CPP). Furthermore, 118 senior party officials were banned from politics for five years.
Since the CNRP had always resembled more of a loose association of strong personalities seeking to topple Hun Sen’s regime — due in part to the coalition’s weak organisational structure and pre-existing conflicts between party leaders — this was a death knell for the cooperation. Although some senior political figures attempted to continue mobilising support from abroad, there was little belief that Hun Sen would allow the CNRP to ever return in force. Whereas in the past, the CPP had allowed a form of opposition to exist in order to retain a veneer of electoral legitimacy (i.e., in so-called electoral autocratic ‘window-dressing exercises’), this is no longer the case.
Cementing domination
Since 2017, the opposition has been unable to recover and finds itself in a scattered and vulnerable state. Although the five-year political ban on CNRP politicians expired in November 2022, almost half have been convicted of crimes such as incitement and conspiracy to overthrow the government, which make them ineligible to hold party positions. As the largest of the opposition parties, the newly resurrected Candlelight Party (CLP) is expected to gain several National Assembly seats — although, predictably, nowhere near enough to challenge the CPP or have a real impact on high-level decision-making.
Ahead of the election, the CPP has already started using its usual repressive tactics against the opposition. One favourite tactic of the CPP is using the co-opted legal system to intimidate opponents and critical voices into self-censorship. For example, CLP Vice President Son Chhay was fined more than USD 750,000 following his comments that the June commune election results “did not reflect the will of the people”. Shows of force, such as mass trials of ex-CNRP members, are also serving to implicitly threaten opposition politicians and activists, compounded by Hun Sen’s recent warnings that he can dissolve any political party at will and that he will “rally” his supporter to “beat up” any opposition politicians who accuse the CPP of electoral fraud. The opposition is also being further weakened by the CPP’s solicitation of party members. In the last few months, we have seen a slew of defections from across the political spectrum, including former-CNRP and former-CPP-antagonist Dam Sith.
Despite the level of electoral control that the CPP has achieved over the years, it still relies on a certain amount of overt intimidation and repression, rather than simply relying on the institutionalised ‘skewing of the level playing field’ that it has achieved via controlling electoral bodies like the National Election Committee and by making (illiberal) amendments to the electoral law. In this way, as the election date approaches, it can be expected that the number and scope of physical and legal threats and harassment against opposition politicians and activists will increase.
Succession planning
While the election result itself is predictable, a big question mark remains over whether Hun Sen will serve out the entirety of his term. While the current set-up of the government will yield little change, the upcoming five years will likely see a transfer of power within the CPP’s leadership structure.
For years now, Hun Sen has been grooming his eldest son, Hun Manet, to take over his role. As a step closer toward achieving this goal, the 45-year-old commander of the army was unanimously elected as the party’s next prime minister at the CPP’s Central Committee meeting at the end of 2021. Western-educated and ‘approachable’, Hun Manet appears to be popular domestically — despite perhaps not having more than just the verbal support of the ‘old guard’ within the party. Although potential competitors had previously reared their heads, Hun Sen’s grip on power has allowed him to successfully stamp out any such challenge.
Experts are predicting that Hun Sen will pass the leadership to Hun Manet within the next few years, ahead of the end of the upcoming political term to ensure a firmly established succession. Hun Manet’s image as a ‘clean politician’, in combination with the relative stability of the country (when compared to regional neighbours), will most likely play in the government’s favour in terms of improving Cambodia’s relationship with the West.
Western democracies were quick to condemn the CPP and Hun Sen after their obliteration of the opposition in 2017, encouraging Cambodia to move even closer to its long-time ally China. However, more recently, the CPP appears to be pivoting towards improving its ties with the US — the latter of which seems happy to oblige (despite the government continuing to maintain strategic ties with China, particularly in terms of military cooperation). For the CPP, renewing these ties would continue to confer legitimacy on its government, and undermine any hopes of international pressure encouraging democratic reforms.
That being said, it is worth remembering that any transfer of power is unlikely to mark the end of Hun Sen’s almost 40-year reign. He has already confirmed that he will stay on as president of the CPP after stepping down as prime minister, and rumours have started to circulate about his plans to keep a tight grip over power by ‘pulling the strings’ in another capacity (for example, as president of the senate). Therefore, as has been the case in Cambodia since the 1980s, power continues to remain concentrated in the same few hands.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Perle Petit works at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank, on issues of democratic backsliding in the EU and beyond. Her research focuses on elections and autocrats/autocratising countries. She is an assistant editor at 9DASHLINE. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Heng Reaksmey.