More managed democracy for Cambodia

By Sebastian Strangio
Asia Times Online

PHNOM PENH - Cambodia's senate elections, held on January 29 to select members of the country's upper house, came and went largely unnoticed. The poll barely registered in the international media, and local critics dismissed it as an undemocratic charade for selecting members to an inert and largely powerless body.

Voting for 57 of the senate's 61 seats is restricted to Cambodia's 11,351 commune councilors and 123 National Assembly members. (Of the remaining four senators, two are nominated by the king and two by the National Assembly). Since votes are given to parties rather than individual candidates, the results more or less mirror the existing distribution of commune council seats.

Official results are yet to be announced, but political analysts reckon that of the 57 senate seats up for grabs, 46 will likely be "won" by the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, Asia's longest-serving national leader. The remaining 11 are expected to go to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party.

According to a recent fact-sheet on the senate compiled by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), the body's closed-list voting system rules out independent candidates and "makes senators answerable to their party, rather than accountable to the Cambodian people".

It also prevents the direct election of senators, as takes place in more-developed democracies, and underscores the executive branch's dominance over the legislature, which many believe now acts as a virtual rubber stamp for Hun Sen and the CPP.

Koul Panha, executive director of the local election monitor Comfrel, said the theater of holding elections on such a restricted franchise was a clear waste of state resources. Ideally, he said, the elections should be subject to universal suffrage and be held concurrent with the country's five-yearly commune council elections, scheduled for June 3 this year.

"They should calculate the seats for the senate through the number of commune councilors that belong to each party," he said. "It is not necessary to conduct elections, to waste money."

In the wake of last month's senate elections, old questions have been raised anew about the upper house's independence. Housed in one of former King Sihanouk's former palaces in central Phnom Penh (a building that also served as General Lon Nol's presidential palace during his 1970-75 rule), the senate's main constitutional duty is to review legislation approved by the National Assembly.

According to the senate's website, the body helps to choose legislation "that is relevant, concise, and in the interests of all Cambodia's citizens and civil society". The body typically holds two three-month sessions per year and senators serve six-year terms. Despite these high-minded mission statements, the senate has little practical power to alter legislation and any of its recommended amendments to laws can be overruled by a subsequent National Assembly vote.

CCHR president Ou Virak said that since its founding in 1999, the senate has only sent two laws back to the National Assembly - both over wording rather than substance. In 2009, opposition leader Sam Rainsy said the senate had "not proven to be useful in any way at all. It has only managed to spend large amounts of public funds for nothing".

Cambodia pays US$10 million per year to maintain the senate, according to Koul Panha of Comfrel - a significant amount for such a poor country to pay for what amounts to a giant rubber stamp. "They look at the words [of laws], but they don't look at the content," he said.

Flawed beginnings

The senate's ceremonial status is largely an outgrowth of its origins. The body was established on March 25, 1999, not to perform any pressing legislative function but in order to resolve the political deadlock that followed the 1998 national election. At that time, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, then-president of the royalist Funcinpec party, was awarded the post of National Assembly president as a reward for bringing his party into coalition with the CPP.

In the political horse-trading that ensued, the senate was created as a new power-base for CPP President Chea Sim, who had occupied the post of National Assembly head since 1993. "They needed to move Chea Sim from the National Assembly and they needed to find a higher nominal position for [him]," said Ou Virak, "and that was the senate".

During a 2009 ceremony marking the body's tenth anniversary, the ailing Chea Sim - one of the CPP old guard who was installed in power after the radical Maoist Khmer Rouge were overthrown by the Vietnamese army in 1979 - said the senate had contributed strongly to Cambodia's political stability and economic development.

"During the 10 years of its existence, the senate has walked an honorable path through activities that have aided the country's reconstruction and national development, and it has played an important role in integrating Cambodia with the region and the world in an era of globalization," he said.

However, without any power to fulfill its purpose as a body of review, and subject to undemocratic indirect elections, critics say the senate has become- like many Cambodian institutions - little more than a vessel for patronage and party politics.

Son Soubert, a Phnom Penh-based political analyst, said the body was a "waste of money and of time", while Ou Virak described it as something of a "parking position" for officials in the market for impressive-sounding job titles.

Senate seats are especially attractive to rich tycoons closely linked to Hun Sen and his CPP. Prior to last month's senate elections, 15 of the body's seats were held by prominent businessmen. Ou Virak predicted that number would likely rise given the benefits of parliamentary immunity and the official access such positions can afford.

"There's a link between being successful in business and having a senate seat," he said.

Past tycoon-senators include Ly Yong Phat, who maintains a formidable economic fief in southwestern Koh Kong province, and Mong Reththy, who has built a fortune from agriculture and construction and owns a private port near Sihanoukville on the country's south coast. (A recent leaked US diplomatic cable described him as "Hun Sen's money man".)

Then there is Lao Meng Khin, a tycoon with a well-connected wife and lucrative construction, logging and agribusiness concessions, and Kok An, who owns casinos in Poi Pet on the Thai border and is the sole local distributor for 555-brand cigarettes (incidentally, Hun Sen's smoke of choice).

Rights groups say agriculture and construction firms linked to Ly Yong Phat and Lao Meng Khin have been responsible for the forced eviction of thousands of residents from valuable land in Phnom Penh and other parts of the country in recent years. (Neither could be reached for this article.)

More worryingly, Ou Virak said, the state of affairs in the senate is "symptomatic of bigger problems" in Cambodia's democratic system, characterized by an ever-expanding network of patronage anchored by hollow institutions and fig-leaf titles.

Within this system, bodies like the senate perform a two-fold function: they not only provide reward (salaries and power) to CPP loyalists, but also diffuse political responsibility throughout myriad ministries and institutions, making accountability difficult to assign.

"Crafting institutions is one way of trying to satisfy party loyalty," Ou Virak said. "No one's accountable."

As if to illustrate this slow phenomenon of institution-creep, the official senate website - mostly given to photos of Chea Sim cutting ribbons and receiving honorary degrees - claims that the body is now considering forming eight regional offices in the Cambodian countryside, for what purpose it's hard to be sure.

Son Soubert said the senate was not much different from the National Assembly, which has done little to address pressing national issues, like land-grabbing and corruption, that affect ordinary Cambodians. "For me, it's all fake democracy - it's just the appearance of democracy," he said.

With an unprecedented political opening currently underway in Myanmar, Cambodia's example stands as a cautionary tale for international observers. Cambodia was the subject of high hopes and close international attention in the years following its first democratic election in 1993, but few now notice as the ruling CPP strengthens its power through a well-managed system of sham polls infused by strong networks of political patronage.

Those regarding Myanmar's recent reforms with unalloyed optimism would do well to bear Cambodia's system of "managed democracy" in mind.

Sebastian Strangio is a journalist based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He can be reached at sebastian.strangio@gmail.com