ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on challenges to the transitional process in the period between the UN elections and the July 1997 fighting. The failure of UNTAC to create conditions whereby the Khmer Rouge would accept disarmament and participate in a parliamentary context, and the paradox of creating a power sharing environment between arch enemies imbued in a political culture of absolutism and intolerance of difference, established the tenor of the inter-party contest for power in Cambodia. The elections of 1993 and 1998 reflect a tension between the need to access political power for the elites, the absence of institutionalised and formal parliamentary opposition, and the lack of political mores and values that make them accountable to the electorate. The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) share of the Assembly was subject to many new, younger names that broke with the past and simultaneously influenced the balance of power within the party.
