Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia
July 27, 2003  

[Photo caption: FSN Sokunn Mealea Prak crosses the Mekong to report on the election from Kratie. Photo courtesy of the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh]

Cambodians are getting a taste of democracy and judging from the response, it was pretty sweet.

More than 400 international observers -- including some 55 members of the U.S. Mission supported by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development -- monitored July’s National Assembly elections. For Cambodians, the election signaled a departure from that nation’s history of totalitarian and brutal regimes.

The campaign even included live, televised debates, according to Heide Bronke, a public affairs officer assigned to the mission.

“There are children growing up seeing a peaceful election as a function of normal life,” she recalled. “I hope they will expect that this right will be afforded them -- without intimidation -- when they come of voting age.”

Embassy observers were thrilled to monitor Cambodia’s elections and several called it the highlight of their tour. They reported from 14 provinces and Phnom Penh, home to nearly 90 percent of the nation’s electorate and 109 of the 123 contested seats in the National Assembly.

When heavy rains flooded much of the countryside, voters paddled to the polls in boats. The embassy’s four-wheel-drive vehicles ferried observers to even the most remote polls.

“The most moving experience I had was the day before election day, when I was driving near the ferry crossing from Phnom Penh,” recalls Geneve Menscher, a political and economic officer at the U.S. Embassy. “After three days of rain, the roads were mud. Yet I passed motorbike after motorbike and truck after truck of young women returning from jobs in Phnom Penh garment factories to vote in their villages. The scale of this mass movement was awe inspiring.”

[End]