Cambodia votes in one-sided election, with Hun Sen victory assured

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- July 22 (UPI) -- Cambodia headed to the polls on Sunday for an election choreographed to end with only one result: a victory for strongman Hun Sen, extending his nearly 40-year reign as prime minister and paving the way for a dynastic power transfer to his son, Hun Manet.

While there are 17 other parties on the ballot, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party is widely expected to see a repeat of its performance in 2018, when it won all 125 seats in the National Assembly.

The CPP's only serious rival, the Candlelight Party, was banned by the National Election Committee in May on a technicality over paperwork -- a move that the U.S. State Department said was politically motivated and served to "undermine Cambodia's international commitments to develop as a multiparty democracy."

The disqualification was just one step in Hun Sen's years-long project of eliminating any hint of opposition to his rule, from shutting down media outlets to harassing and arresting political opponents to expelling rights watchdogs from the country.

Months before the 2018 election, courts dissolved the rival Cambodia National Rescue Party, which posed a legitimate threat to the Hun Sen regime after taking 44% of the national vote five years earlier.

One of the CNRP's leaders, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 27 years under house arrest in March, while dozens of other political opposition figures are in prison and hundreds more have fled into exile.

Meanwhile, the last major independent news outlet still operating in Cambodia, Voice of Democracy, had its operating license revoked in February.

The result is an election in name only, international observers say.

"Authorities in Cambodia have spent the past five years picking apart what's left of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association," Amnesty International interim deputy regional director for research Montse Ferrer said on Friday.

"Many people feel that they are being forced to participate in this election despite their party of choice not being on the ballot," she said.

Washington has sanctioned several Cambodian officials and the European Union partially withdrew preferential trade tariffs in 2020 over the crackdown, but 70-year-old Hun Sen has mitigated the effects by drawing ever closer to China economically, diplomatically and militarily.

Sunday's general election, the seventh since a United Nations-administered vote in 1993, marks a low point in Cambodian democracy, Sophal Ear, associate dean and professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, told UPI.

"Elections are the culmination of a democratic process," he said. "There has not been a democratic process since at least 2018. The dissolution of the CNRP broke one leg of that stool. Not allowing the registration of [Candlelight Party] is another leg. The snuffing out of the last independent media is the fracture of the final leg of that stool."

Despite eliminating the competition, Hun Sen appears bent on driving high voter turnout as an "important indicator of political legitimacy," Human Rights Watch said earlier this week.

Cambodia passed amendments to its electoral laws last month that criminalize spoiling a ballot or advocating for an election boycott. Anyone who boycotts the election is also barred from running as a candidate in the future.

The Candlelight Party said that five of its members have been arrested under the laws in the week leading up to the election. Several other opposition figures, including exiled former CNRP president Sam Rainsy and vice-president Mu Sochua, were convicted in absentia and banned from holding elected office for at least 20 years.

As voters turned out in large numbers on Sunday to polling stations in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen's face was omnipresent on billboards, posters and campaign flyers stuck to walls and storefronts. One image showed the leader smiling in front of a new bridge, pushing his regime's selling points of infrastructure development, rapid economic growth and stability after decades of war.

While the trade-off of authoritarian rule for economic advancement has genuine support from some, other voters in the capital expressed a growing fear of speaking out or not participating in the election.

One shopkeeper across the street from a large outdoor polling station said he felt pressured to cast a ballot, even though his vote was essentially meaningless.

"There is only one choice," the man in his 40s, who asked not to use his name, said. "We all know who the winner is going to be already. But we are still feeling the need to go and vote."

Sunday's election is also setting the table for a generational transition of power, with nearly one-quarter of the CPP's candidates related to existing administration members, according to a count by media outlet CamboJa.

At the top of the next generation is Hun Manet, the eldest son of Hun Sen and his designated heir.

The 45-year-old left his post as commander of the army to run for a seat in the National Assembly, and Hun Sen surprised many by announcing this week that the transfer could come as soon as next month.

"In three or four weeks, Hun Manet may become prime minister," Hun Sen told Chinese news outlet Phoenix TV in an interview on Thursday.

"I believe he has a better chance of success than me," he added.

The son brings a very different set of credentials than his father, who was a Khmer Rouge cadre before rising through a Vietnamese-installed government to become prime minister in 1985.

Hun Manet graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1998 and went on to receive a master's degree in economics from New York University in 2002 and a doctorate from the University of Bristol in 2008.

Some have speculated that his background will offer a chance to rebalance Cambodia's relationship with the United States and other Western countries, although there is also a widespread sense that Hun Sen will continue to pull the strings from behind the scenes.

"I don't think we will see much light between father and son," Sophal Ear said. "The playbook is not changing anytime soon. Observers in the West can hope, but they should do so with their eyes open. They need to watch what [Hun Manet] does, not listen to what he says."

Some 9.7 million Cambodians are eligible to vote at nearly 24,000 polling stations around the country. Preliminary results are expected on Sunday evening, the National Election Committee said.