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| The vast majority of Cambodia's population reside in rural areas where economic livelihoods have undergone scant improvement over the last three decades of state-enforced socio-political stability and, despite the country receiving an annual flow of over 1billion dollars in international aid each successive year - School of Vice |
by Kimly Ngoun
AUG 11 — Over the last decade, a remarkable political
transformation has been taking place in many Southeast Asian countries, from
mainland states like Burma and Thailand to maritime states like Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore. The power of the old political establishments has been
declining or contested by the emergence of powerful challenging forces. The
decline of the old institutions is commonly attributed to some of the following
conditions — domestic socio-economic and demographic change, the emergence and
expansion of the middle-class, the governments’ longheld grip on power, and the
tactics of the challenging forces using new modes of communication such as
mobile phones and social media.
Cambodia’s old political establishment is now joining this
regional trend. The previously unchallengeable power of incumbent Prime
Minister Hun Sen, Asia’s longest-serving prime minister, is now being fiercely
contested leading to a new set of questions about the country’s political
future. The unofficial result of the recent July 2013 national election shows
Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) falling from 90 in the 2008 election
of the parliament’s 123 seats to 68 in this election and the surge of the
Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), a merging of the Sam Rainsy Party and
the Human Rights Party in 2012, from 29 to 55. Furthermore, the opposition
party claims the number of seats would have been higher had there not been
election irregularities.
This is the first time since the 1993 national election that
the ruling party’s seats dropped and the opposition party’s rose.
What is more remarkable is (based on the unofficial result),
CNRP managed to perform well in CPP’s rural strongholds; leading the CPP in at
least three populous provinces and falling just behind it in others. And this
shift in political allegiance prompted local and international observers to ask
the big question — why?
While many analysts attribute CPP’s decline and CNRP’s
rising popularity to demographic change, the role of social media and other
factors (including the ruling party’s abuse of human rights and its lack of a
determination to fight corruption and social injustice), my perspective
emphasises two factors — the people’s desire to improve their livelihoods and
CNRP’s innovative election campaign policy targeting household income. I do not
deny the significance of the broader above-mentioned factors, but see them as
playing a secondary role and appealing to a small segment of the population,
limited to urban areas only. Those factors, i.e., demography, social media,
corruption and injustice cannot explain why people in rural areas, previously
strong supporters of the ruling party, shifted their allegiance to the
opposition party.
Cambodian people’s desire to improve livelihoods
The maintaining of peace, political stability and
development by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party over the last two decades
has attracted foreign investment and tourists, and thus led to the emergence
and expansion of the rich and the middle-class residing in cities and towns and
an increasing number of young rural folks migrating to urban areas in search of
jobs and opportunities.
From the beginning of his fourth mandate of 2008, Hun Sen,
with the financial backing of tycoons and Chinese loans, has focused on
developing public infrastructure especially roads and bridges linking cities
with provinces and towns with villages. The improved extensive road networks
have increased the intensity and frequency of rural-urban/village-town
interaction, thus changing rural people’s perspectives on life and their
relations with the state.
Because Cambodia’s civil war over two decades prevented the
construction and restoration of roads and bridges, rural life was usually
isolated with limited connections to cities. The road networks coupled with
private bus companies offer daily transportation between Phnom Penh and
provinces have reduced travelling time from days and weeks to hours. When rural
people travel to cities and towns, they see new cars, motorbikes, beautiful
houses and the luxurious items of the rich and the middle-class urban dwellers.
This prompts them to reflect on their poor village life, and kindles a desire
to connect to any source of power that promises them opportunities for
livelihood improvement.
To some, being poor is no longer acceptable as part of their
karma from a previous life based on the Buddhist notion or the normality of
rural village life. So when the CNRP offers them a more promising livelihood
options than that of the ruling party, they are ready to shift their political
allegiance. Now having glimpsed new life possibilities through improved road
networks, voters want more. It looks like Hun Sen’s CPP has become a victim of
its own success.
CNRP’s policy of increasing household income
For the first time in the July 2013 national election, the
opposition party offered a policy that promised to increase family household
income. In previous elections, their campaign policies focused more on
promoting democracy, fighting corruption, building independent judiciary and
state institutions and dealing with illegal Vietnamese migrants. These policies
appealed to urban dwellers and the circle of Cambodian educated and nationalist
elites, while the majority of ordinary people especially those in rural areas
could not grasp these concepts and could not work out the direct relationship
between these big ideas and their everyday lives. In previous elections, the opposition party
promised, vaguely, to improve people’s livelihoods.
In this latest election, the CNRP offered policy supporting
household income in clear numbers. They promised that if they won the election,
the CNRP-led government will offer US$10 a month to people over the age of 65
as part of the government’s welfare scheme, a minimum wage of US$150 a month to
workers in the garment and shoe industry, a minimum monthly salary of US$250 to
public servants, and an increase in salary to personnel in the police and the
military.
This promise of aggressive increase in family household
income appealed to both urban and rural dwellers and to voters of all age
groups and has significantly boosted CNRP’s popularity among voters. Under the
current Hun Sen government, garment factory workers receive a monthly minimum
wage of more than US$70 and ordinary public servants receive their monthly
salary of less than US$100. These monthly wage and salary rates do not satisfy
many workers and ordinary public servants because they are insufficient against
the rising cost of living and do not support their new life aspirations.
So it is the magic of the numbers 10, 150, and 250 that has
enabled the CNRP to penetrate CPP’s rural power base and increase its
popularity in urban areas. The garment and shoe industry employs more than
350,000 young workers, many of whom come from rural areas and send small
amounts of money to their parents back home in villages. It is almost
impossible to imagine that their parents, siblings, grandparents, and relatives
in extended families back home were not happy with the prospect of a monthly
wage increase.
Unlike western families in which members hold different bank
accounts, Cambodian families pool money for the common use of the family.
Therefore, an increase in income for one member contributes to an increase in
the entire family household income. So when many of these 350,000 workers
combined with approximately 200,000 public servants influenced their family
members to vote for the party that promised them an increase in salary, we see
a huge surge in the number of people casting votes for the opposition party.
The US$10 a month welfare scheme is attractive to old people
especially those in rural areas and has provided another route for the CNRP to
penetrate rural family and village life. In Cambodian society, old people command
respect and hold moral authority in both the families and the villages. Their
influence on others in their families and villages to vote for the opposition
party cannot be underestimated. It is not clear whether the CNRP’s campaign
strategists had prior knowledge of the implications of their welfare scheme and
wage increase policy in regards to Cambodian family’s household income
management and village’s social structure.
The opposition party had difficulty spreading its message
since the ruling party holds a tight grip over most local media outlets.
Nevertheless, its ideas managed to reach rural areas through rumour and word of
mouth. Cambodian rural social communities are held together by ceremonies and
religious rituals. People gather together and help each other during weddings,
funerals, housewarming ceremonies etc. And it is hard to imagine that people
did not pass on and discuss the new income-improving policies.
So I do not see demographic change, social media,
allegations of the ruling party’s abuse of power and human rights as the main
factors driving the country’s recent political transformation as many analysts
have suggested. This notion of people’s grievance that has turned many voters
from CPP to CNRP is just secondary.
What has actually given popularity to the CNRP in both urban
and rural areas is the intersection between people’s desire to improve their
livelihoods and CNRP’s magic numbers 10, 150, and 250 that people can relate to
easily. Rural people voted for CPP in previous elections mainly because they
saw Prime Minister Hun Sen’s offer of peace and building roads as benefiting
their daily lives. But once peace and extensive road networks were in place,
people start to ask what else can his government offer and they are ready to shift
their vote to any party which can respond to their new aspirations. — New
Mandala
* Kimly Ngoun is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Political and Social Change at The Australian National University.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication
and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.
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