Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen set to win by landslide in elections with opposition suppressed, critics purged

The counting of ballots in Cambodia’s general election began on Sunday, with veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party almost certain of a landslide win because to systematic repression and intimidation of any genuine opposition. His detractors claim that the procedure has rendered democracy in the Southeast Asian country a farce.

The European Union, the United States, and other Western countries declined to send observers, claiming that the election did not meet the criteria for being called free and fair. International officials from Russia, China, and Guinea-Bissau were on hand to witness Hun Sun vote immediately after the polls opened at 7 a.m. Sunday in his home area outside of Phnom Penh.

He raised his ballot for all to see before dropping it into the silver metal box and exiting the station, pausing to snap photographs and shake hands with supporters outside.

Hun Sen, Asia’s longest-serving leader, has progressively cemented power through strong-arm methods over the previous 38 years. However, at the age of 70, he has indicated that he will transfer over the premiership to his oldest son, Hun Manet, during the forthcoming five-year term, maybe as early as the first month following the elections.

Hun Manet, 45, holds a bachelor’s degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a master’s degree from New York University, and a Ph.D. from Bristol University in the United Kingdom. He is now the commander of Cambodia’s army.

Despite his Western background, experts do not anticipate any rapid policy moves from his father, who has slowly brought Cambodia closer to China in recent years.

“I don’t think anyone expects Hun Sen to sort of disappear once Hun Manet is prime minister,” said Astrid Norén-Nilsson, a Cambodia expert at Sweden’s Lund University. “I think they will probably be working closely together and I don’t think that there is a big difference in their political outlook, including foreign policy.”

Hun Manet is part of a larger generational shift, with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party seeking to place younger leaders in most cabinet positions.

“That’s going to be the big change of guard, that’s what I’m watching,” Norén-Nilsson said. “It’s all about the transition, it’s all about who’s going to come in and in what positions they find themselves.”

At the station where Hun Sen cast his ballot, voter Nan Sy, a former lawmaker himself with a smaller royalist party, said the main issue for him was stability.

“Without stability we cannot talk about education, we cannot talk about development,” the 59-year-old said without saying who he voted for.

There were few reports of any protests against the elections, but Gen. Khieu Sopheak, Cambodia’s national police spokesperson, said 27 people were being sought over allegations they called for voters to spoil their ballots in a Telegram chat channel. He said there had been two arrests at polling stations as well.

Hun Sen had been a middle-ranking commander in the radical communist Khmer Rouge responsible for genocide in the 1970s before defecting to Vietnam. When Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, he quickly became a senior member of the new Cambodian government installed by Hanoi.

A wily and sometimes ruthless politician, Hun Sen has maintained power as an autocrat in a nominally democratic framework.

His party’s stranglehold on power faltered in 2013 elections, in which the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party won 44% of the popular vote to CPP’s 48%. Hun Sen responded to the wake-up call by going after leaders of the opposition, primarily through sympathetic courts, which eventually dissolved the party after local elections in 2017 when it again fared well.

Ahead of Sunday’s election, the Candlelight Party, the unofficial successor to the CNRP and only other contender capable of mounting a credible challenge, was barred on a technicality from contesting the polls by the National Election Committee.

While virtually assuring another landslide victory for Hun Sen and his party, the methods have prompted widespread criticism from rights groups.

Human Rights Watch said the “election bears little resemblance to an actual democratic process,” while the Asian Network for Free Elections, an umbrella organization of almost 20 regional NGOs, said the National Election Commission had showed a “clear bias” toward the CPP in barring the Candlelight Party.

“Such disqualification further exacerbates the imbalanced and unjust political environment, leaving minimal room for opposition voices to compete on equal footing with the ruling party,” the group said in a joint statement.

“Moreover, the shrinking space available for civil society and the deliberate targeting of human rights defenders and activists raise serious alarm. The constriction of civic space undermines the active participation of civil society in the electoral process without fear of reprisal.”

After the “vastly unpopular” way the opposition was neutralized in 2018, this time around there is little sign of widespread popular discontent, Norén-Nilsson said, because Hun Sen and the CPP have done a very effective job over the past five years of building a sense among many Cambodians that they are part of a new national project.

The strategy has involved careful messaging, with sweeping slogans like “small country, big heart,” and little talk about policy, she said.

“It’s really quite astonishing how the CPP has managed to gain at least acceptance for what we see now,” she said. “If before people thought that the glass was half empty, now it’s half full, so you focus more on what you have than don’t have.”

With the Candlelight Party out of the running, the largest beneficiary of any anti-CPP vote will likely be FUNCINPEC, a royalist party whose name is an unwieldy French acronym for the National Front for an Independent, Neutral and Cooperative Cambodia.

Founded in 1981 by Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s former king, the party defeated the CPP in 1993 U.N.-run elections, but his son, Norodom Ranariddh, ended up having to agree to a co-prime ministership with Hun Sen.

Today’s party president, Norodom Chakravuth, who returned from France to take control of the party a little over a year ago after the death of his father Norodom Ranariddh, told The Associated Press that his sights are more on the 2028 election but is hoping this time to possibly win one or two seats.