The Axis of the Republican Right

In April, an IRI delegation visited Cambodia and concluded, "[a] climate of intimidation and fear pervades the pre-electoral environment" and that "time [is] running out" for radical changes in Cambodia’s electoral machinery. Before a single vote was cast the IRI had pronounced that the election would not be "free and fair." Former UN special representative in Cambodia Benny Widyono commented, "It is clear that for IRI the only free and fair election is [an] election won by the Sam Rainsy Party [SRP]."

The aggressive campaign in Washington against Hun Sen and his victorious CPP and their all-out support for opposition leader Sam Rainsy have less to do with the quality of Cambodia’s fragile democracy, and much more to do with an unfinished cold war agenda.

In 1983, when President Ronald Reagan was waging his global crusade against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union and IRI was just being launched, Hun Sen was playing a key role in Cambodia’s nation-building efforts after the Khmer Rouge holocaust and was appointed prime minister in 1985.

What the Reaganite Republicans hated most was that regime change which ended the Khmer Rouge genocidal nightmare had been carried out by the "wrong guys": Vietnam. This doubly reminded the Pentagon hawks of their bitter failure not only in Vietnam, but also in Cambodia.

Some of the same right-wing Republicans that are so gung-ho to get rid of Hun Sen today are the same hawks that backed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, in a guerilla war against the Hanoi-backed Phnom Penh government. IRI president Folsom worked at the Pentagon under the Reagan administration.

Sam Rainsy: American Hero?

When Senator McConnell called for regime change in Cambodia it was tacked on to similar calls for Burma. Sam Rainsy was lauded in Washington as the "Aung San Suu Kyi of Cambodia", allegedly hounded and persecuted by a "communist dictator." During an award ceremony in Washington DC in September last year, Senator John McCain presented Rainsy with the IRI-Heritage Freedom Award and paid him fulsome tribute as a "genuine hero for the entire world." The ceremony was jointly sponsored by the rightwing US think-tank the Heritage Foundation, and the IRI, which purported to operate as an impartial observer of the Cambodian election process. Senator McCain happens to be chairman of IRI.

While Rainsy and the neo-conservatives hope to further discredit Cambodian democracy by comparing it with Burma or Zimbabwe, there is a conspicuous lack of support from the rest of the world for such a linkage. Support for Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement in Burma enjoys all-party support in the US, as well as vocal backing from Europe. The obsession to get rid of Hun Sen and endorse Sam Rainsy as the sole light of democracy in Cambodia is not shared by the US Democrat Party, and has no support in the EU or among Asian neighbors. A more sober perspective would accept that although Hun Sen is no great champion of human rights, his authoritarian temperament is not far different from leaders in Malaysia, Thailand or elsewhere in Asean who would never be targeted for regime change.

IRI and Democratic Standards

During the course of this election campaign, the credentials of the IRI and its operations in Cambodia were challenged for the first time. IRI officers have denied showing favoritism towards the Sam Rainsy Party, insisting they are non-partisan and provide training to candidates from all political parties.

But Prince Norodom Rannariddh, president of the outgoing National Assembly, does not share this view. Last November he said, "The truth is IRI manipulates the internal affairs of Funcinpec [the royalist party headed by Rannariddh] in order to entice Funcinpec members to switch to Sam Rainsy." The Cambodia Daily reported that a direct approach was made by an IRI officer to woo one of the royalist party’s most respected members of cabinet, Mu Sochua, Minister for Women’s Affairs.

Last year the IRI held a seminar for Sam Rainsy Party leaders on how to develop their national campaign and IRI’s website made little bones about their allegiances, admitting that "IRI worked closely with SRP." In addition, a recently launched IRI-funded organization, the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, maintains close links with the SRP.

Personal links between Senator McConnell’s regime-changers in Washington and the IRI operations in Cambodia were less than coincidental. McConnell’s chief of staff, Paul Grove, ran the IRI Cambodia office from 1994 to 1996. Sam Rainsy’s communications chief in the 1997 election, US journalist Rich Garella, took over the same job with IRI in the 2003 election while retaining his membership of the US branch of the Sam Rainsy Party.