ANLONG VENG DISTRICT, Oddar Meanchey Province – In a different world,
the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) might have banked on Anlong
Veng to form the heartland of its campaign to win this month’s national
election.
The most steadfast of the Khmer Rouge’s former strongholds, Anlong
Veng’s leaders waged a guerrilla campaign against the government of
Prime Minister Hun Sen for almost two decades.
Troops from the district were also accused of triggering the July
1997 fighting in Phnom Penh by moving to join forces with Prince
Ranariddh’s Funcinpec in an ostensible putsch against Mr. Hun Sen.
Fighters in the area only completed their surrender to Mr. Hun Sen’s government in 1999.
But on Saturday, as the CPP opened its campaign in Anlong Veng with a
parade through town that drew thousands of supporters, the closest the
opposition CNRP came to receiving any public attention was a brief
mention that came from a loudspeaker attached to a billboard featuring a
glowing image of Mr. Hun Sen.
“Please fellows, remember that if you vote for Kem Sokha and Sam
Rainsy, it’s like you’re voting for the Khmer Rouge to come back,”
trumpeted a voice from a CPP speaker.
The speaker was located opposite the town’s central roundabout—a
tawdry faded-yellow obelisk donated by Mr. Hun Sen in 2000, now
plastered with white and blue CPP flags.
With the CNRP’s own campaign being launched in Anlong Veng on
Saturday, Khlaing Sam Oeun, the CNRP’s district executive head, said
that even making the public aware of the opposition party’s existence
was proving difficult.
“We don’t have radio and TV, and that makes it extremely hard for
us,” he said, adding that the CNRP’s campaigning that morning had
consisted of himself and a few other activists walking along dirt roads
and talking to people about party policies. Mr. Sam Oeun said he had
just 60 volunteers helping his campaign from the 25,000 people who are
expected to vote in the district on July 28.
CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann said that the opposition’s main strategy in
Anlong Veng was to distribute campaign leaflets from door to door to
spread the party’s policies.
“We don’t have a big army… [but] we also have a loudspeaker to
broadcast our political message—to broadcast our voice from village to
village.”
“These are our two main strategies,” he said.
The loudspeaker Mr. Sovann was talking about is attached to Mr. Sam
Oeun’s house on the winding dirt streets of Anlong Veng’s outskirts.
Over the weekend, the CNRP’s message was being blurted out over empty
fields rolling away into the distance.
Anlong Veng district governor Yim Phana said Friday that about 18,000
of the 25,000 voters in the district registered to vote were dedicated
CPP supporters, but acknowledged that not everyone in the district was a
sure vote.
“Most of the people [who don’t support the CPP] are the people who had problems such as land issues,” he said.
But Mr. Phana was still optimistic that most of the other 7,000
voters would vote for the CPP come election day. He also had plans in
place to draw the 400 to 500 people truly dissatisfied with the
government back into the CPP fold.
To that end, General Chea Dara, deputy commander of the Royal
Cambodian Armed Forces based in Preah Vihear province, had been called
in to speak for the CPP.
“Prime Minister Hun Sen has this great plan having students giving
out land titles to the people,” Gen. Dara said Friday. “We will tell the
people that since 1998, we have had peace here, and roads and bridges.
The CPP is the one that has built all of these things.”
Indeed, for some, Gen. Dara’s message resonates.
Prom Thy, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, said that while he had
briefly joined the opposition CNRP after being evicted from his land, he
had since reconsidered his political allegiance.
“I was with the opposition party, but now I am with the CPP,” he
said. “Before I had a problem with some land in the jungle, but now the
land is mine.”
The successes of the ruling party’s land-titling scheme and its
apparent development successes have not been the only reasons the CNRP
has failed to make inroads in Anlong Veng.
For Anlong Veng pagoda’s chief monk, Soum Sarorn, the main
explanation for the opposition’s inability to gain a foothold in the
once instinctively anti-government area has been its simple failure to
campaign.
“People don’t know them because they haven’t seen them here,” he said.
Now, one year after the CNRP was formed in a merger between the SRP
and the Human Rights Party, nobody from the opposition has come to visit
Mr. Sarorn.
This was a message echoed in half a dozen other interviews conducted with former Khmer Rouge soldiers in the area.
“Ninety-five percent of the people in this district vote for the
CPP,” said one, 60-year-old Loen Ban, who turned out to Saturday’s
parade proudly sporting a white CPP shirt and hat, despite having lost
his left eye during fighting against the government of Mr. Hun Sen in
the 1980s.
“The hospitals, schools and pagodas are built by the CPP,” Mr. Ban
explained. “We have not seen an opposition party doing anything here.”
In the rural outskirts of town, one solitary house displays a
billboard with the image of CNRP leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha
holding raised hands.
Suon Samnang, the deputy commune chief of Anlong Veng district’s
Trapaing commune, and the owner of the billboard, said that he joined
the opposition in 2007 after his land was taken from him by military
police.
“After the CNRP wins, they will take the land and return it to the
people,” he said, noting that most members of the opposition party in
Anlong Veng were land-grab victims.
Still, some voters in the area echoed concerns—raised often by Mr.
Hun Sen in the run-up to the election—that the country would fall into a
state of civil war if the ruling party does not win the vote.
“I am afraid that change could cause me hardship. It would not be the
same; it could cause turbulence and people will be in trouble,” said
34-year-old Theb Thuy.
Another neighbor, 41-year-old Chhun Eng echoed Mr. Thuy’s worries.
“When there’s change, there is always chaos,” he said. “Though I like
them [the CNRP], I don’t know what to do. [Voting for the CPP] is to
avoid turbulence. Change could cause more hardship.”
Living nearby, Khieu Odom, the son of former Khmer Rouge head of
state and current Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal defendant Khieu
Samphan, said he was in strong support of the ruling party.
“I am voting for the CPP,” he said, explaining that most people in
the area had moved on from the days when the locals fought a fierce
armed conflict against the government of Mr. Hun Sen.
“Now people have land for farming, and jobs. I have my own job. If we
let other people take over, it might be difficult,” he said.
Mr. Sarorn, the Anlong Veng pagoda’s chief monk, felt much the same.
Far from being resentful of the government, he said he believed the CPP
should be credited with allowing them to live normally after their
surrender.
“People here used to be under the Khmer Rouge—they had fought with
the government for such a long time. They now always think that, had the
CPP not let them live, they all should have been killed,” Mr. Sarorn
said. “The people know that their leaders are with the CPP now, so they
dare not betray their leaders.”
4 comments:
Please read this:
https://thediplomat.com/asean-beat/2013/07/03/cambodian-rulers-dogged-by-pre-election-jitters/
The article is totally failing to mention the new generation voters. Mostly focus on old generation. Most of the young voters do not like to vote for CPP and they don't care about the past. They are often thinking about their future. They do not believe in the status quo. They want better future than their parents have had.
The problem is that the opposition didn't have the means, like radio, tv etc, to spread their messages to the people in this region. The other factor is that the people in that region have lived under communism and dictatorship for more than 40 years, they know no other things, so they just accept the status quo that it is the best or that they are too afraid to support the opposition because of possible persecution from the government like what they have experienced under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Not true! young generation did not have this experience. They never live under the Khmer Rouge and they very much expose to outside idea of freedom.
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