VZCZCXRO8730
PP RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHNH
DE RUEHPF #0705/01 2391137
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 261137Z AUG 08
FM AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHBS/AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS PRIORITY 0079
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA PRIORITY 2326
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 0641
RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON PRIORITY 0105
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY 0112
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK PRIORITY 2308

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PHNOM PENH 000705 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/MLS, P, D 
BRUSSELS FOR USEU 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2018 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PREL PHUM CB
SUBJECT: IN FAREWELL TO AMBASSADOR, SAM RAINSY HIGHLIGHTS 
QUEST FOR "AUTHENTIC" DEMOCRACY 
 
REF: A. PHNOM PENH 694 
     ¶B. PHNOM PENH 601 
 
Classified By: CHARGE D'AFFAIRES A.I. PIPER CAMPBELL FOR REASONS 1.4 (B 
, D) 
 
¶1.  (C)  SUMMARY: An animated Sam Rainsy bade farewell to the 
Ambassador in a recent lunch during which Rainsy continued 
his single-minded crusade to taint CPP's election victory. 
The Ambassador praised the work of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) 
which had taken the high road in the election and had gained 
further strength with two additional seats in the National 
Assembly.  While noting that the Embassy takes seriously the 
election rigging charges being raised by SRP, the Ambassador 
cautioned that he would need to see how the numbers add up to 
meet claims of "massive election fraud."  (NOTE:  The 
evidence presented to date shows some local fraud, but 
nothing like fraud on the scale claimed and apparently not 
enough to change a single provincial outcome. END NOTE.) 
Rainsy thanked the Ambassador for a statement that called on 
all five parties in the new National Assembly to have a 
meaningful role, including on committees.  Rainsy claimed 
Human Rights Party leader Khem Sokha was solidly in the fold 
as a coalition partner. 
 
¶2.  (C)  Citing the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, Rainsy said 
he has the support of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's 
Diplomatic Advisor Jean-David Levitte to press the 
international community to remember the agreement's call for 
"authentic and periodic elections."  With only modest success 
at home, we expect Rainsy to take his "election rigging" case 
on the road to Europe, the UN and Washington D.C.  In the 
meantime, the party Secretary General has stepped down, and 
MPs-elect are tentative about their future as Rainsy (almost 
alone) threatens an SRP boycott of the National Assembly 
opening session.  Whether a compromise with CPP on SRP's role 
in the National Assembly can be worked out or whether the 
threatened boycott will be turned into a charge SRP has 
"abandoned" its NA seats are questions that boil down to the 
mind-sets of two political personalities -- Hun Sen and Sam 
Rainsy.  Mediation between the two is desirable but may not 
be possible in the immediate future.  END SUMMARY. 
 
Long Talk on Election 
--------------------- 
 
¶3.  (C)  Rainsy spent most of the 90-minute discussion on 
August 11 laying out his complaint of "massive" election 
fraud on a national scale, but without presenting significant 
evidence.  The Ambassador promised to send Pol-Ec Chief to 
monitor the National Election Committee (NEC) hearing on 
SRP's six complaints.  (NOTE:  In the August 13 hearings, we 
learned that the six cases involved about 5 individual 
examples of mis-issuance of the 1018 identity forms to 
otherwise legitimate, listed voters, and the testimony of one 
village chief that he wanted to issue more.  Four of the 
cases were in Kampong Cham, the most populous province.  END 
NOTE.)  When asked about the numbers, Rainsy acknowledged 
this was a legitimate question but noted he had shown about 
75 forged 1018 identity forms to the EU and said that we 
should check with the EU.  He also noted that the UNDP would 
send an election assessment team which would evaluate whether 
it was "worth continuing" to provide election assistance to 
Cambodia.  (NOTE:  The UNDP indicated the assessment team 
would both review the past performance and be forward 
looking, and would seek commitments from the RGC to make 
further improvements before committing itself to additional 
election assistance. END NOTE. ) 
 
¶4.  (C)  Rainsy focused on two allegations of election fraud 
- erasures of up to 800,000 voters from the registration 
lists and the use of false 1018 identity forms to allow 
unregistered CPP supporters to vote.  (NOTE: According to the 
NEC, 585,723 names were erased during a publicly announced 
period last fall, which was appealable by any voter.  END 
NOTE.)  On the false identities, Rainsy insisted these were 
produced on a large scale, in "assembly-line" fashion, citing 
one CPP commune office where he has reliable testimony this 
occurred on the scale of dozens.  He said that the SRP was 
issuing a "sensitivity study" to show how the erasure of 50 
opposition voters from every polling station and the increase 
of 10 CPP voters in each station could skew the results by 12 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000705  002 OF 004 
 
 
seats in CPP's favor.  The Ambassador said that the embassy 
was always open to  receiving additional evidence, but he 
would want to see the actual evidence that indicated fraud on 
such a massive scale, to get a sense of the dimension of it 
all.  (NOTE: As of August 25, SRP claims it has amassed 180 
cases of fraudulent identities used nationwide among a voter 
base of 8,125,529 registered voters.  Embassy understands 
that partial evidence regarding over 100 of these cases of 
fraudulent ID's was submitted to the Constitutional Council. 
END NOTE.) 
 
Authentic Elections 
------------------- 
 
¶5.  (C)  Noting anecdotal information on one or two cases, 
including a male using the 1018 form of a female, Rainsy 
claimed again that SRP had enough evidence to show 
large-scale irregularities.  Citing the 1991 Paris Agreement 
on Cambodia, Rainsy said that the current election violated 
its call for "authentic and periodic elections."  This 
violation would force all of the Paris Agreement signatories 
to "open their eyes," said Rainsy.  In the meantime, if Hun 
Sen declared that an SRP boycott was the equivalent of 
abandonment of National Assembly seats, it would show that 
Hun Sen is violating the law and that Cambodia is a 
"dictatorship without rule of law."  Rainsy commented that 
CPP's trouble was that it was "greedy to an unprecedented" 
extent in the election.  This was a moment when the 
international community was at a crossroads, he noted.  In 
the meantime, without an opposition, the people who were 
disaffected would have no outlet and they would take to the 
jungles, he said.  When the Ambassador noted Khem Sokha's 
absence at an SRP press conference, Rainsy replied that Khem 
Sokha went on an HRP radio show the same day to support the 
SRP stance.  We later learned that friction between HRP's 
number two, Keo Remy, and Rainsy was the reason for a pause 
in relations but that now Rainsy and Khem Sokha are back 
together. 
 
Party in Turmoil 
---------------- 
 
¶6.  (C)  A week after the Ambassador's farewell lunch, SRP 
Secretary General Eng Chhay Eang announced to the press that 
he was leaving his position so that he could "follow others" 
in SRP.  The fact that he did not consult with the SRP 
leadership before the announcement is being touted as one 
more indicator of disarray in the party.  Conversations with 
two of SRP's most senior parliamentarians and a member of his 
cabinet confirm that the party has had only two meetings 
since the election -- one of the roughly 70-member Standing 
Committee and one of the elected MP's -- in which Rainsy 
reportedly did most of the talking.  In the first days after 
the July 27 election, Rainsy was reportedly so agitated by 
the results that he wanted to take to the streets in a 
"people power" demonstration.  His advisors eventually 
convinced Rainsy that he would not attract large crowds, that 
the international community was not convinced the elections 
were rigged, and that CPP, by contrast, was unified and would 
stand up to any such action.  Since then, MP Son Chhay told 
Pol/Ec Chief Rainsy has been "going left, going right" in 
disorganized fashion, with the main goal of "causing trouble 
for CPP" but without thinking through the party's next steps. 
 Rainsy has surrounded himself with a small coterie of 
advisors, but mainly is "doing things himself," according to 
Son Chhay, who was appointed spokesman after the election but 
"chose to say nothing" as the only safe course, so as not to 
contradict the unpredictable Rainsy's many public 
pronouncements. 
 
Some Seeking a Dialogue with CPP... 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶7.  (C)  Son Chhay indicated there is general agreement 
within SRP that the election climate, while improved over 
past elections and certainly less violent, was still "dirty" 
and an agreed upon long-term goal in SRP is to use lessons 
learned from this election to seek reforms for the next one. 
However, Son Chhay indicated there was less agreement in SRP 
on what to do over the next month during the formation of the 
new government.  Finally, on August 25, Rainsy approved 
submitting to NA President Heng Samrin a written proposal by 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000705  003 OF 004 
 
 
Son Chhay for new internal rules in the National Assembly. 
The rules would jettison the notion that a party with a 
simple majority would control all NA appointments and 
apportion NA vice president slots and committee 
chairmanships, for example, according to a party's ranking in 
the election.  The first vice president would be from the 
ruling party but second and third vice presidents would come 
from the second and third-ranking parties in terms of number 
of seats.  Son Chhay indicated he wanted SRP Senator Kong 
Korm to negotiate the proposed rules changes as part of an 
SRP initiative at dialogue with CPP. 
 
...But SRP Inner Circle not Talking 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (C)  Mu Sochua, the Secretary General heir apparent at 
SRP, told Son Chhay August 25 that, while she supports 
talking with CPP, Rainsy has decided to keep the pressure on 
the "unacceptable election cheating," to threaten a boycott 
of the September 24 inaugural session of the National 
Assembly, and to travel to Europe and the U.S. to once again 
highlight the story.  SRP August 25 unveiled a letter to 
Indonesia and France (the Paris Agreement co-chairs) calling 
the Cambodian election a "violation" of the Paris Accords. 
Son Chhay said he worried that either the boycott would split 
SRP (and some would show up at the NA inaugural session) or 
that CPP would be so angered by SRP's antics that they would 
use the threatened boycott as a pretext for not talking, not 
considering proposed NA rules changes, and keeping SRP out of 
all NA committees. 
 
Rainsy: "Respect the Opposition" 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (C)  In the August 11 farewell lunch with the Ambassador, 
as Rainsy noted that 25 percent of the SRP MP's are women and 
that SRP is gaining a more rural base, the Ambassador closed 
by praising SRP for its maturity as a party and applauded the 
dedication Rainsy has personally shown to the cause of 
democratic reform in Cambodia.  Rainsy thanked the Ambassador 
for his support, noting that at least four SRP MP's were also 
U.S. citizens, and others hailed from France and Australia. 
Rainsy again turned to the need for the international 
community to more strongly back the Sam Rainsy Party, 
pointing to the support of Nicolas Sarkozy's Diplomatic 
Advisor Jean-David Levitte, who had personally sent a letter 
to Rainsy and who advocated that "Cambodia should be more 
democratic."  It was important for the international 
community to force the Hun Sen government to abide by 
democratic principles and to respect the opposition, Rainsy 
said in closing. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶10.  (C)  The Ambassador's discussion with Sam Rainsy was 
warm and collegial, though Rainsy abruptly changed the 
subject when asked about the lost opportunity of a "coalition 
bonus" that would have netted some 20 more NA seats to the 
combined forces of SRP, HRP, FUNCINPEC and NRP.  Given the 
reaction of SRP's newspaper these past two weeks -- which is 
pinning all of its hopes on the EU and the UN to act as the 
agreeable jury while Rainsy appeals to the court of public 
opinion on unsupported claims of massive vote rigging -- 
Rainsy appears to understand that we cannot support him 
without the evidence.  However, while the Ambassador went 
into his final meeting with the understanding that Sam Rainsy 
was struggling with his party, it was not apparent then just 
how isolated the SRP inner circle has become in the 
post-election period or how far apart are SRP's two main 
strategies for dealing with the new government. 
 
¶11.  (C)  Rainsy clearly still does not consult with his full 
party membership.  In the meantime, those in the party who 
would like to build on the solid base they have, including by 
fostering a dialogue with the CPP, are left stranded by a 
type of short-term, fire-brand politics that only divides 
Cambodians.  We assume this latter tactic will probably gain 
Rainsy more moral and financial support in the planned trip 
abroad, most likely with Tioulong Saumura and HRP leader Khem 
Sokha. 
 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000705  004 OF 004 
 
 
¶12.  (C)  However, Rainsy is testing not just Hun Sen but all 
of the CPP factions, which can easily unite around the fact 
that CPP took 58 percent of the vote, most by well-resourced, 
well-organized work at the grass roots (and not by fraud), 
and CPP would feel that it was well within its rights to 
translate its electoral mandate into domination of the 
National Assembly.  Spokesman Khieu Khanarith signaled as 
much when he spoke August 24 of the government proposing a 
"package" at the first parliamentary session. 
 
¶13.  (C)  Son Chhay's conclusion may offer the best next step 
forward: Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy may need an outsider to bring 
them together.  Son Chhay has proposed the king being 
mediator as one solution.  But at SRP, the drumbeat of 
uncompromising "opposition" appears to be the only tune heard 
among the inner circle. 
CAMPBELL