The vote on Sunday is expected to strengthen Prime Minister Hun Sen’s grip on power. Here's what to know:
hirty years ago, some 22,000 police, military, and administrative personnel flew to Cambodia for one of the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping missions. After decades of bloodied fighting between the Khmer Rouge communist rebels and government forces, the warring factionsfor the U.N. to prepare the Southeast Asian nation for “free and fair” elections in a step towards democracy.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, then 41, was in the middle of it all. Having fought on both sides of the war, Hun Sen, who ascended to power in 1985, was a key player in the peace accords. But when the elections did not turn in his favor, Hun Sen initially refused toand threatened the secession of certain provinces from Cambodia. He eventually accepted a coalition government in which he was made Second Prime Minister.
But the move toward democracy in Cambodia was short-lived: in 1997, Hun Sen staged a coup against his coalition partner and took back the premiership a year later. Since then, Hun Sen has tightened his grip on power and been accused of a gamut of human rights violations, from arbitrary killings to the torture of political dissidents to clampdowns on the press and more.
that the Hun Sen administration’s actions have made the elections in Cambodia “neither free nor fair.”On Sunday, around 9.7 million Cambodians will see 18 political parties on their ballots. But only one of them is truly viable—the ruling Cambodia People’s Party—after the Hun Sen administration decimated all the major opposition parties.
In 2017, a highly-politicized Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the popular Cambodia National Rescue Party and barred them from contesting in future polls. And in May, the Candlelight Party, which made some inroads in local elections last year, was disqualified by the national election committee over dubious registration technicalities.
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