The people of Cambodia go to the polls tomorrow to vote in a national election that could be a defining event in the development of democracy in their country. Or the election could lead to months of political instability and social disruption. While most observers feel it is unlikely Phnom Penh will witness the violent scenes of protest seen on the streets of Jakarta in May, there is reason to be concerned about the potential for repression and political power brokering.
The machines of intimidation and vote-rigging are already in action. Households are being offered gifts, including packs of monosodium glutamate in return for fingerprint pledges. There has been a noted increase in kidnappings and robberies and some ethnic groups have come under fire.
King Sihanouk held several national elections during the 1950s and 1960s and even the Khmer Rouge held an election in 1976, although they carefully selected the people who were allowed to vote.
The UN-supervised elections in 1993 resulted in a narrow win for the Royalist Party of FUNCINPEC, led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh (son of King Sihanouk) over the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) led by Hun Sen, who was the key figure involved in ousting the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
The latter refused to accept the result and eventually a compromise was brokered whereby power was shared by both parties with Ranariddh as first Prime Minister and Hun Sen as second Prime Minister.
Last July, however, Ranariddh was deposed by Hun Sen in a bloody coup d'etat and had to flee the country.
This caused strong international reaction but a complex peace proposal sponsored by the Japanese government allowed him to return and lead FUNCINPEC in the current elections.
What happened in 1993, given that most of the leading characters are still political players today, provides some hint as to what could happen following this election.
There is a total of 39 parties registered. Only three have any realistic chance of success; CPP, FUNCINPEC and the Sam Rainsy party.
CPP towers over the others to the extent of its party structure and preparedness for the election. It is helped by the fact that it controls the state radio and TV.
And if this immense network is not enough, CPP also dominates the Constitutional Council, the highest legal authority in the country, which will eventually make the ruling on whether the election is valid.
FUNCINPEC by contrast looks weak. The party was split by last year's coup, with party leaders and their supporting forces going into exile. It is doubtful the party will come even close to the share of votes it received in 1993.
The third realistic horse in the race is the Sam Rainsy party. Its namesake showed himself to be a capable and determined reformer as finance minister in the 1993 coalition. He confronted the issue of corruption head on, costing him much of the initial support he had enjoyed in the government and forcing him to resign in 1994.
Since then, he has been positioning himself as the only true democrat, and has been active in developing trade unions and protecting exploited garment workers against their employers. After last July's coup, Rainsy left the country. He returned in January and has been extremely effective in organising his new party.
While the Khmer Rouge is now much depleted by defections to the government, internal divisions and the recent death of Pol Pot, it is still large enough to cause problems and is not quite the political pariah in Cambodia that most western people think. Indeed, the two main political parties in Cambodia are trying to persuade lower and middle-ranking Khmer rouge cadres to defect to them. Getting into bed with the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge, now controlled by the one-legged butcher, Ta Mok, the man who deposed Pol Pot, would stretch political pragmatism a big far.
The ambivalence of Cambodian politics towards the people and organisation that executed, tortured and starved 2,000,000 of its citizens to death in the mid1970s is hard to understand. Certainly ordinary people live in fear of a resurgence of the Khmer Rouge but when they speak of genocide, they speak of Pol Pot rather than the Khmer Rouge.
While it might be the newest political force in the race, the Sam Rainsy party is causing the biggest political ripples in the country. A recent opinion poll conducted by a French consultancy predicted that Sam Rainsy would get the largest number of votes. While this data may be suspect, there are strong indications that CPP will not win a majority and that they may not even get the largest share of the vote.
If Sam Rainsy is elected, it would indeed be a democratic triumph. Paradoxically, it would be a result that could not possibly be translated into a peaceful transfer of power. The CPP would be sure to attempt to preserve its control by distinctly undemocratic means - perhaps using its power over the Constitutional Council to declare the events invalid and giving itself a mandate for another term in power.
Ironically, if the CPP gets the biggest percentage of the vote, it would be able to remain in power without blowing apart the democratic process completely.
One way or another, it is unlikely that the votes cast by the ordinary people will be accepted by all parties. The level of upheaval will be determined only by the ones doing the most questioning. If it is CPP, Cambodia could be looking at its democratic regress rather than its continuing progress.
Cambodia is a very poor country with low level literacy, poor health care and education and totally inadequate infrastructure. Only 20 per cent of the urban population and 12 per cent of the rural population have access to safe drinking water. Most of all it suffers from the legacy of a genocide followed by a famine.
Cambodia needs huge investment in infrastructure. Concern and other development agencies, like the International Labour Organisation, build roads and dig wells, but these are primarily geared towards providing services to remote and poor villages. The tragedy is that the natural resources of the country are being squandered.
Large hardwood forests, sold by the Khmer Rouge, are being destroyed by logging project operations causing ecological damage and with little apparent benefit to the national treasury.
Yet this country is not without hope. When you see the large number of Russian-built double trailer CAMA 3 trucks trying to negotiate the National Route 5 obstacle course, you get the impression that there is commerce in progress. When you see how industrious and hardworking the Cambodian people are you get a sense of the progress that could be made if only there were political stability and good governance. If only. . .
David Begg is chief executive of Concern. He is leaving for Sudan, scene of a disastrous famine, this weekend