ABSTRACT
With national elections the centerpiece of the United Nations peace initiative in Cambodia, both front-runner parties confronted a new challenge: putting their parties to a popular vote to gain power. Neither the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) nor the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) Party had ever been elected to power, although both claimed to represent their constituents. Under the CPP, Cambodia had been a communist state for fourteen years; other political parties were prohibited and political opponents classified as enemies of the revolution. Before transforming itself into a political party in 1992, FUNCINPEC had operated as a guerilla movement in coalition with the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK) and one other resistance faction to end the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and the CPP-dominated regime in Phnom Penh. As a member of one of the new parties remarked, both parties had shared in the “violent and undemocratic tradition of the past.” 1 With UNTAC’s arrival in March 1992, however, the CPP and FUNCINPEC had to contend with putting their differences to the test of the ballot box instead of the battlefield in order to gain legitimacy through an elected mandate. Further, because UNTAC was not just a supervisory body but was responsible for organizing and conducting the election, the issue of getting the vote through “free and fair” means had to be considered seriously by both parties. Neither could rely solely on the methods of vote-rigging, manipulation, and fraud that have been the stock-in-trade of most Southeast Asian elections. 2
