Basil Fernando

July 26, 1998 was no dream date. Although violence that happened before the elections was still very much on the minds of the people, the last days prior to the polling was unusual in the Cambodian context. Rallies of the opposition parties drew tens of thousands of people to the streets. The elections held in May 1993, the first democratic poll after Pol Pot’s takeover in 1975, however, failed to generate such a response. People at the time were afraid to be identified with an opposition party, though the majority used their secret vote against the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (popularly known as the Hun Sen party). The mentality then was: "How am I to know whether my neighbour is not a spy?" This time, at least in the towns, the situation was different. People wearing T-shirts with slogans and caps with signs demonstrated on vehicles and motorbikes under the opposition banners.

Watching Phnom Penh a few days prior to the latest elections, one could not help thinking of the doomsday in April 1975, just weeks before Americans abandoned Vietnam, when the Khmer Rouge forces marched from the jungles to Phnom Penh and turned the welcoming city dwellers out of the town within 24 hours. Simply the unimaginable terror that followed left one out of every seven people dead within just four years and the survivors terrified. When people came to poll in May 1993, that terror was very much on the minds of the people despite that they wanted to return to peaceful times. Massive U.N. presence might have helped to exorcise the terror. But to forget it, more time was needed.

The five years that followed saw the rapid disintegration of the forces of the Khmer Rouge. The death of Pol Pot early this year was symbolic of the demise of the Khmer Rouge itself. How far the older survivors of the Pol Pot’s genocide can recover is hard to tell, as the charting of such tragedies is beyond the capacity of human imagination. The encouraging factor is the surfacing of the younger generation - young men and women aged just above 18, the minimum age for voting. They are the ones who do not fear to show their faces among those who stand up to say "no."

Cambodia remained a closed society between 1979 and 1993, following a socialist model of Vietnamese type. This closed system was further retarded by international sanctions during that time to stop the imagined expansion of Vietnam. During that period a new elite emerged. They took over the properties of people who left the city in 1975, and became the country’s new rich. They also took the country’s jungles (turning them into tree timber) and other resources. This elite prefers the closed society to continue.

The elections of July 1998 show that the repression of the closed society has difficulties to survive. The challenge is growing fast. As it is not possible to stop the old from getting older and the emergence of more and more young ones, freedom has more and better chances to thrive.

While political parties still try to settle the disputes relating to vote counting in the elections, things have significantly changed in the psychology of the people. It is no longer the leaders playing cat and mouse with the people, instead, it is the other way round. Time has begun to run in favour of the people. In the coming five years people will be even more assured that the Khmer Rouge is really dead. Cambodians are likely to develop their own history of democracy, with the lessons of the sufferings of Asia’s worst genocide in mind.