VZCZCXRO4424
OO RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHNH
DE RUEHPF #0240/01 0430612
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 120612Z FEB 07
FM AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 8001
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PHNOM PENH 000240 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/MLS, DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM CB
SUBJECT: THE FIGHT FOR THIRD PLACE IN CAMBODIA'S APRIL 
COMMUNE ELECTIONS 
 
 
 ¶1.  (SBU)  Summary.  Recent discussions with NGOs and 
political party members suggest that the real race for the 
April 1 commune council elections will be between FUNCINPEC 
and the NRP of Prince Norodom Ranariddh probably competing 
for third place.  As the clear front-runner, the ruling CPP 
continues to dominate media coverage of the upcoming 
elections, and CPP officials are reportedly spending every 
weekend campaigning for CPP commune candidates, providing 
money and gifts to voters as well as ensuring that 
infrastructure needs of the community are addressed.  The 
opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) is working on expanding its 
base of communes under SRP control, and hopes to come in a 
respectable second in the elections.  Prince Ranariddh, 
however, is not expected to return to Cambodia in the near 
term due to pending lawsuits.  The most interesting raise is 
between FUNCINPEC (aligned with Hun Sen) and the new party 
formed by Prince Norodom Ranariddh following his ouster from 
FUNCINPEC.  The fact that Ranariddh is not expected to return 
anytime soon may handicap that race.  All parties agree that 
the April 1 results will set the stage for the 2008 election 
campaign.  A UNDP election consultant's recent report details 
the shortcomings of the National Election Commission (NEC) 
and the electoral process in Cambodia.  End Summary. 
 
No Contest on April 1, Save for Third Place 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U)  A series of meetings with Norodom Ranariddh Party 
(NRP) and Sam Rainsy Party officials, members of the 
Cambodian People's Party (CPP), and NGO representatives 
working on elections, revealed that the ruling CPP's hold on 
the majority of the nation's 1,621 communes will continue on 
April 1.  On that date, the country will vote for the second 
time for commune council representatives.  Commune councils 
are the lowest government body recognized by the Cambodian 
Constitution, with 11,261 seats for the country's 24 
provinces.  The CPP dominated the first commune council 
elections in 2002, winning a total of 7,695 seats and taking 
the commune chief position (i.e., dominating the vote in a 
commune) in 1,597 communes out of 1,621 total communes. 
FUNCINPEC came in second, with 2,211 seats and winning 10 
communes.  The SRP took third place, with 1,345 commune seats 
and a dominant position in 13 communes.  (Note:  These 
figures omit one commune in Banteay Meanchey province where 
the SRP victory was contested by the CPP, and an awkward 
power-sharing arrangement has remained in effect.  End Note.) 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  This time, all non-CPP parties acknowledge that 
the CPP will win; the question is by how wide a margin.  Even 
CPP stalwarts assess that vote buying may not be enough 
during upcoming elections; voters demand infrastructure 
projects, wells, and roads -- if they are not satisfied, the 
CPP runs the risk of people taking the money/gifts but voting 
for another party.  One CPP central committee member 
complained that he and other senior RGC officials have been 
spending each weekend since November 2006 in the provinces 
drumming up support for CPP candidates.  This same member 
acknowledged that lower ranking CPP officials must deliver 
their districts in order to keep their jobs; this official 
said he will not lose his job but must develop an electoral 
constituency if he is to advance within the party.  While he 
dislikes the required campaign work and the associated outlay 
of cash or projects he is required to supply, he knows that 
his future within the CPP depends on his electoral work.  At 
the same time, he noted that it was good the CPP was not 
complacent about the elections; the party leadership is 
taking very seriously constituency concerns to ensure 
registered CPP voters turn out for the CPP on April 1. 
People within the party are asking questions of local 
authorities and expecting accountability, he added, which is 
making the CPP a more democratic party. 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  SRP officials say that they are prepared for a CPP 
victory, but their aim is to expand the SRP's current base of 
control within the commune councils.  In 2002, they won 13 
communes, but in the national elections in 2003, the SRP won 
enough seats in the National Assembly to represent majority 
control in roughly 140 communes -- particularly those in 
urban areas.  SRP Secretary General Mu Sochua said that the 
SRP's goal for the 2007 elections is to consolidate their 
hold on those communes, and possibly expand control to as 
many as 300 communes-- i.e, to double their base.  The party 
has worked hard to identify the best candidates to run, and 
in some cases, they have dropped non-performing SRP commune 
council incumbents.  Sochua described a situation in Poipet 
where their commune chief had grown unpopular, so the party 
polled local citizens who identified a local physician as the 
best candidate; the SRP enlisted him as their candidate. 
Sochua noted that the CPP does a similar exercise, but the 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000240  002 OF 004 
 
 
ruling party only asks citizens to name the best candidate 
from a CPP-provided list; the SRP takes a more open-ended 
approach and tries to identify the person whose name appeals 
to the widest swath of voters.  (Note:  Separate 
conversations with CPP officials indicate that Mu Sochua's 
outline of CPP candidate selection procedures is accurate; 
one CPP Senator noted that CPP provincial leadership approves 
the final choices.  End Note.)  SRP also wants to take the 
deputy commune chief position in every commune where they do 
not come in first, in order to solidify their position as the 
leading second party in Cambodian politics. 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  The NRP is confident they will take third place 
and embarrass FUNCINPEC and the CPP in the process.  Even 
without Ranariddh's presence in Cambodia and no party 
organizational structure (two Ranariddh advisors noted that 
they have 35 people running the party and the rest are 
candidates and supporters at the grassroots level -- there is 
no provincial party structure in between), Ranariddh 
loyalists claim that the royalist voters associate NRP 
candidates with the royal family and former King Sihanouk's 
legacy -- and that is going to mean a third-place victory for 
the NRP, they say.  Despite press reports to the contrary, 
Ranariddh's office in Phnom Penh says that negotiations 
between the CPP and Ranariddh that would eliminate the legal 
problems facing the Prince are continuing.  The ability of 
the NRP to gather so many defectors from the ranks of 
FUNCINPEC commune councilors is proof that FUNCINPEC rank and 
file will not support FUNCINPEC at the polls and do not view 
FUNCINPEC as the standard bearer of the monarchy, say 
Ranariddh's people.  The CPP's continual claim that FUNCINPEC 
will remain a coalition partner of the CPP in a future 
government also serves to discredit FUNCINPEC, as the voters 
see a vote for FUNCINPEC as a vote for the CPP -- so perceive 
that they might as well vote for the CPP, according to the 
NRP.  In effect, the CPP is destroying FUNCINPEC, and will 
either try to cut a deal with Prince Ranariddh to keep the 
opposition split, or eliminate royal family members from 
participating in politics -- a topic that continues to be 
raised by the CPP.  In that event, say Ranariddh loyalists, 
the Prince will renounce his title, just as the former King 
did.  NRP members point to their ability to register NRP 
party lists in the majority of communes in a relatively short 
period of time as an indication of the degree of NRP support 
among grassroots FUNCINPEC members. 
 
COMFREL:  Improvements Since 2002; Difficulties Remain 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  In a meeting with Koul Panha, director of the 
Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL), 
Panha described for Pol/Econ Chief the differences between 
the 2002 elections and the lead up to the April 1, 2007 
elections.  On a technical level, NEC has brought 
improvements to the electoral system, said Panha.  Two SRP 
appointees have been added to the NEC and there was broader 
recruitment of Provincial Electoral Committee (PEC) and 
Commune Electoral Committee (CEC) members, said the COMFREL 
official.  The number of registered voters increased and the 
NEC deserves credit for that, added Panha.  The NEC remains a 
strongly partisan organization dominated by the CPP, as are 
the PECs and CECs where over 70 pecent of the members are 
with the ruling party, but it's better than 2002, Panha 
allowed.  Registration of party candidate lists has been 
smoother this time, Panha added, as the 2002 legal framework 
made it easy to reject lists of candidates over a single 
problem; that has been eliminated this time.  The NEC has 
also dispensed with the "NGO Coordinating Committee," which 
Panha said was actually an impediment to NGO participation in 
the electoral process.  Now, NGOs can work directly with the 
NEC and cooperation has improved, he said. 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  The mechanism for resolving election-related 
complaints has not improved, however, affirmed Panha, and is 
obviously skewed against non-ruling parties.  The NEC's plan 
for the provision of voter information slips was a good idea 
in theory, but the implementation through the largely 
CPP-affiliated village chiefs was a failure.  During the 2002 
and 2003 elections, added Panha, each party did its own voter 
information checks. 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  There has been an overall improvement in the 
electoral environment with less overt violence so far, said 
Panha, but while physical attacks have decreased, other forms 
of intimidation have arisen.  Family members are threatened 
with physical violence or loss of jobs if their 
relative/candidate is a threat to the CPP, said Panha, who 
provided an example of a female SRP candidate whose husband 
was told he would lose his military position if he could not 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000240  003 OF 004 
 
 
convince his spouse to withdraw.  Vote buying and gift giving 
by the CPP has increased this time, said Panha.  Another 
negative factor that has not changed since 2002 is the lack 
of media access accorded to non-CPP candidates.  Although the 
official campaign period is only 15 days before the 
elections, already the radio and television programs are 
promoting CPP candidates while other parties are denied 
access, according to COMFREL. 
 
UNDP Report Cites Shortcomings, Areas for Improvement 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  A UNDP consultant recently completed an assessment 
of Cambodia's electoral system and made a number of 
recommendations to address inherent problems in the conduct 
of elections.  The report identifies the NEC's affiliation 
with the Ministry of Interior as problematic, and notes that 
the body's independence remains in question.  The report also 
cited many of the shortcomings noted by COMFREL and other 
NGOs; namely, the lack of a neutral electoral dispute 
resolution body, the media dominance by the CPP, and the 
overly complex and detailed regulations governing elections 
(while even the most basic application of election laws is 
not done equitably), lack of oversight of campaign finances, 
and a number of other points.  In a meeting with Pol/Econ 
Chief, the consultant noted that while Cambodia's elections 
may be technically adequate, they fall short of achieving 
their Constitutional mandate of promoting true political 
pluralism by virtue of the weaknesses outlined in the report. 
 He urged that future donor funding go towards rectifying the 
inequities in the electoral system as a whole, and not focus 
on the technical aspect of the elections. 
 
USG Assistance to Elections 
--------------------------- 
 
¶10. (U)  USAID is supporting the National Democratic 
Institute (NDI) and election monitoring NGOs COMFREL, NICFEC, 
and the Youth Council of Cambodia (YCC) in a variety of 
activities surrounding the elections on April 1.  NDI will 
print 45,000 copies of an election day manual for polling 
agents; NDI also trained 240 political party representatives 
from the CPP, SRP, FUNCINPEC, NRP to act as party monitoring 
trainers for their respective parties; NDI will assist local 
NGOs develop voter guides highlighting party issues; NDI will 
organize 30 candidate debates in 10 provinces that will be 
broadcast on Radio Free Asia; NDI has trained 36 female 
representatives (12 each) from the CPP, SRP, and FUNCINPEC to 
improve the communication skills of women candidates. 
COMFREL and NICFEC have worked with field monitors in 
election coverage both before and after election day, and 
NICFEC has produced 120 commune-based theater performances to 
educate the populace on good governance and women as leaders. 
 USAID has funded the International Republican Institute 
(IRI) to work with the YCC to encourage youth as poll 
monitors. 
 
Teachers as Electoral Workers 
----------------------------- 
 
¶11.  (U)  USAID has noted that during a January 2007 
Education Joint Technical Working Group meeting of donors 
highlighted UNESCO concerns that teachers had been recruited 
as Commune and Provincial electoral officials for the CECs 
and PECs.  NEC policy states that only non-teaching education 
staff may perform election-related functions, but reportedly 
many teachers (who make an average of USD 30 per month) are 
attracted to the higher salaries -- USD 80 for CECs and USD 
200 for PECs.  USAID education partners report noticeable 
absences among teaching staff, and in Mondulkiri province, 
roughly 30 percent of teachers are allegedly working as 
electoral officials in some capacity.  During a recent USAID 
field visit to Kratie province where USG personnel met with 
five local election officials, three of the five were school 
officials who planned to be absent from their educational 
duties for three months. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶12.  (SBU)   Some donors have evinced little interest in the 
commune elections, characterizing them as "unimportant." 
However, commune councilors select the members of the Senate 
as well as the village chiefs, so have a stronger political 
role beyond the local level.  While it may be tempting to 
overlook Cambodia's upcoming commune council elections as a 
foregone conclusion before they are even held, no one party 
appears to be taking the outcome for granted and all are 
continuing to jockey to improve their positions.  The CPP is 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000240  004 OF 004 
 
 
not giving into complacency but is looking to its candidates 
to appeal to constituencies based on performance and services 
delivered -- and is not relying on the standard gifts of 
5,000 riel ($1.25) or a bag of sugar.  The SRP is being 
realistic and trying to secure the uncontested second 
position; the NRP looks to come in a respectable third and 
most observers (even some FUNCINPEC members) agree that is 
likely.  What everyone does agree on is that the April 1 
results will be the starting point for the 2008 national 
election campaign -- which is why human rights leader Kem 
Sokha is waiting quietly to see how the parties fare before 
making his decision whether to form a party to contest the 
national elections next year.  End Comment. 
MUSSOMELI