A False Dawn - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 88

governments wanted another election, Hun Sen would give them one—with all the trim-
mings.
Still, the CPP left nothing to chance. It launched more forced voter registration drives,
and pressed known supporters to take oaths in support of the party. As one human rights
worker in Battambang told Human Rights Watch, “they make people take an oath by
drinking water with a bullet in it from an AK-47. Those who drink this must promise to
vote for the CPP. If they break their promise, those people will be killed by the bullet
they drink.” In Phuong, a 58-year-old activist working for the KNP—recently renamed
the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) to protect it from CPP infiltrators—was shot and killed along
with his four-year-old daughter in Prey Veng. Elsewhere, homes belonging to Funcinpec
activists were burned to the ground. Around 40 opposition activists were found dead as
the election approached. 87
When Cambodians finally went to the polls on July 26, the 1993 result was reversed:
the CPP won 41.4 percent of the vote, followed by Funcinpec with 31.7 percent, and
Rainsy's SRP with 14.3 percent. Two new BLDP splinter groups, the Son Sann Party
and the Ieng Mouly-led Buddhist Liberal Party, both failed to win a seat and sank from
view. 88 Hun Sen got just the result he wanted. International observers noted the killings of
opposition activists, the CPP's wall-to-wall media domination, and its control of the Na-
tional Election Committee. And they signed off on the process anyway. Observing events,
Stephen Solarz said the election might one day be seen as a “miracle on the Mekong,”
an assessment that he was later forced to qualify. 89 As an exercise in democracy it was a
mirage, of course. But it was something close to a miracle that despite CPP intimidation,
Funcinpec and the SRP had together won more of the popular vote than Hun Sen. Cam-
bodians had again used the secrecy of the ballot to signal their discontent.
This time it was the opposition's turn to cry foul. Rainsy and Ranariddh alleged ballot-
stuffing and complained about the NEC's quiet adoption of a new voting formula which
had magically increased the CPP's share of National Assembly seats. Since the CPP had
failed to win the two-thirds majority required to form a government alone, a joint Funcin-
pec-SRP boycott could hold Hun Sen hostage until an agreement was reached on a new
coalition. In mid-August, the two parties launched a campaign of street protests calling
for a new election. The park in front of the National Assembly, the site of the previous
year's grenade attack, was turned into a tent-city dubbed “Democracy Square.”
The high-spirited protests lasted two weeks before the police were deployed. Demo-
cracy Square was forcibly cleared and bulldozed, while protesters hurled rocks and crude
Molotov cocktails. Monks marched through the city, defying the orders of their superi-
ors to remain in their wats . In response, the CPP mounted its own “spontaneous” demon-
strations, populated by plain-clothes thugs, many of them belonging to a pro-Hun Sen
front group known as the Pagoda Boys' Association. Armed with sticks and rocks, they