The Khmer Rouge appeared to be the big losers. Backing out of a peace agreement brokered by the United Nations in 1991, they had threatened to sabotage the election. Since last March, when their campaign of disruption began in earnest, the guerrillas killed at least 131 Cambodians and eight members of the 22,000-member U.N. peacekeeping operation, the largest in the organizations history. Yet during the election itself, there was only scattered violence. Thousands of guerrillas and people under their control even came out of the bush and went peaceably to the polls.
The Khmer Rouge may have calculated that disrupting the election would backfire. “I think the relative calm is a testimony to people power,” said a Khmer-speaking U.N. official. “The guerrillas seem to have respected the popular will to vote.” They may also have been trying to throw support to the royalist opposition party, commonly known by its French acronym, Funcinpec. Funcinpec, which is led by the son of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s head of state, said it would include the Khmer Rouge in a government of national reconciliation. Seeing that the people were determined to vote, the guerrillas may have decided to jump onto Funcinpec’s bandwagon.
If so, Sihanouk promptly threw them off. “The Khmer Rouge have suffered a historic defeat, and they will not recover from such a blow,” the 70-year-old prince told a delegation of European parliamentarians. He repudiated his promise to include the guerrillas in a coalition government. Sihanouk said the role of the Khmer Rouge-as well as his own-would be left to the newly elected National Assembly. “I will accept an American or a French-style presidential regime,” or any other mandate, he said, including “a constitutional monarchy or ’the king who reigns but does not govern.” Sihanouk said he was also willing to serve as a president “who exercises no power at all and specializes in the inauguration of flower shows.”
Civil war:Meanwhile, the country’s current ruler, the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party, was hanging tough. Prime Minister Hun Sen called for continued confrontation with the Khmer Rouge, and if he wins the election, he may resume the civil war. To offset Funcinpec’s voting strength in the cities, government officials tried to drum up a large vote for the CPP by both cajoling and intimidating the peasants. “The government’s tactic in the countryside has been simple: pressure, pressure, pressure,” said a United Nations official. Both the CPP and Funcinpec said they were confident of victory. If the government loses, it isn’t at all clear that the CPP will peacefully transfer power to its rivals, though Hun Sen claimed he was ready to do so. “I am a sportsman of the democratic game,” said the former Khmer Rouge.
Both the CPP and the Khmer Rouge are well armed and full of fight, and the country could easily be plunged back into civil war. But last week’s turnout showed that most Cambodians are sick of bloodshed. “Rural folks want to live in peace, even if they have to coexist with the Khmer Rouge,” said a U.N. official. No one is a more expert practitioner of coexistence than the wily Prince Sihanouk, who has flip-flopped on dealing with the Khmer Rouge several times in the past. If the election result gives his Funcinpec a strong role to play, he may yet be able to work out a compromise that fulfills the people’s desire for peace.
