By Alex Halperin
The cambodia daily

Violence, scandal and bickering marked the campaign preceding the country’s first commune elections, held on Feb 3.

The election itself went smoothly as voters chose commune chiefs responsible for economic and social development as well as security and the carrying out of directives from the central government.

Despite intimidation, vote-buying and political killings, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, Cambodia’s leading monitor group, said it was an improvement over the 1998 and 1993 elections.

Parties complained about unfair media access, and the National Election Committee, after wavering, banned the televising of several multiparty roundtable discussions. The CPP had previously announced its refusal to participate in a labor-themed roundtable because, the party said, it was “illegal” and “biased.”
In the last frenetic days of the campaign Kassie Neou, then vice chairman of the NEC, broke ranks to slam his committee for favoring the CPP and insufficiently training poll workers. “The NEC is allowing them to control the election’s fate,” he said.

On Election Day, an observer was shot and a candidate found hanged, but the mood nationwide was generally upbeat.

To no one’s surprise, the CPP dominated the election, winning almost 1,600 of the nation’s 1,621 communes. Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party won about a dozen seats each. While it came in second, Funcinpec did not perform up to expectations, which led to an increase in tensions between the CPP and Funcinpec, the parties in the ruling coalition. Never truly resolved, the rift widened as the July 2003 national elections approached.

After asserting before the election that Prime Minister Hun Sen wanted him dead, opposition leader Sam Rainsy complained throughout the year that the election’s goal, to decentralize government, had not been achieved. Independent election groups generally agreed. US Senator Mitch McConnell, a strong critic of Hun Sen, blamed him for election violence and later in the year called for “regime change” in Cambodia and Burma.

The year witnessed a great deal of activity but little progress toward trying the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity. In February, the UN withdrew from its agreement to work with Cambodia, citing differences over any potential tribunal’s composition and procedure.

The government had maintained that Cambodian law would take precedence in the court. Hans Corell, the UN’s legal counsel said Cambodian law “would not guarantee the independence, impartiality and objectivity” that a UN court required.

Hun Sen, who called the trial “a must” in an interview published in The Cambodia Daily in January, vacillated between diplomatic obeisance and stark defiance during the year and proclaimed Cambodia capable of judging the Khmer Rouge.

Thanks in part to international pressure on the UN, unofficial talks barely stopped. In December the UN agreed to a mandate to work with Cambodia toward a trial, a gesture widely viewed as the last possible effort to bring justice the aging Khmer Rouge leaders.

One Khmer Rouge leader, Sam Bith, did get convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But it was for his role in the kidnapping and murder of three Western backpackers in 1994. The trial was temporarily suspended because of Sam Bith’s poor health.
There were also signs that Cambodia had begun to reconcile its horrific past. For the first time, a cautiously written school textbook explained the Khmer Rouge, and a controversial map of skulls was dismantled at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum.

Though there were occasional flickers of hope, in 2002 Cambodia remained plagued by poverty, corruption, disease and environmental degradation. Independent forestry monitor Global Witness said the 17 largest logging companies had violated the country’s moratorium on logging, especially in Kompong Thom province. In response, Hun Sen threatened to expel the group for alleged exaggerating.

Malaria, dengue fever and more prosaic illnesses continued to devastate the population, and there was no indication that infant mortality and malnutrition rates were improving. The prison population escalated. Drug use, especially of methamphetamines, was up and leprosy remained a threat in several provinces. The HIV/AIDS rate was high and predictions said it would get worse.

Land laws, a corrupt judiciary and deforestation were among the main concerns at a June meeting of international donors whom the government asked for $1.4 billion over three years. Despite what a British representative called “overall disappointing” progress and a growing need for money in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the country was awarded $635 million for one year, more than it had asked. Hun Sen assured the donors an anti-corruption law would be presented to the Assembly by June 2003. It did not happen.

On the international stage, Cambodia kept 905 Montagnards, hill tribe villagers who fled Vietnamese persecution, in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri refugee camps until they received asylum status and emigrated to the US state of North Carolina. And the Ministry of Public Works and Transport assumed responsibility for registering ships after several Cambodian-flagged boats were involved in high-profile accidents or found to be smuggling drugs. King Norodom Sihanouk called Cambodia’s a “flag of convenience.”

Weeks after a terrorist bombing killed hundreds at nightclubs on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, Phnom Penh hosted a secure and successful Asean Summit that focused on trade and fighting terrorism.

In 2002, some of the worst drought and flooding in recent memory did $33 million in damage.

Jose Carreras, one of the world- famous Three Tenors, gave a December concert at Angkor Wat accompanied by hundreds of monks, dancers and the Singapore orchestra. Tickets for the black-tie affair cost between $500 and $1,500 and included a cod dinner.