How the global community can help strengthen democracy in Cambodia
Sam Rainsy / Phnom Penh Post |
Editor,
With the situation
in Cambodia reaching a critical point, the international community in general,
and the West in particular, can exert a stronger influence than most people may
think.
The key word is
legitimacy. Many authoritarian regimes crave and scramble it. Like in Cambodia,
they try to build a facade of democracy in order to secure global recognition
and respectability. Legitimacy for the current Cambodian regime allows the
powerful here to abuse their power in the conduct of their lucrative businesses
often associated with the plunder of our country’s riches. But the crumbling of
the regime’s democratic facade could end its legitimacy and could jeopardise
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s family’s business interests as recently exposed by
Global Witness.
Only the prospect
of “delegitimisation” can push Hun Sen to reverse his authoritarian drift and
to show more respect for democratic rules and principles. Cambodia is too small
a country – depending too heavily on international assistance, trade
privileges, debt forgiveness, new loans, foreign direct investment and access
to export markets in Western countries – to be willing to risk any form of
international isolation associated with “delegitimisation”.
The ongoing
political repression is definitely not conducive to acceptably free and fair –
meaning legitimate – elections in 2017 and 2018. Any illegitimate elections
can only produce an illegitimate government, which would be a dangerous and
unprecedented development since the UN-organised elections and the formation of
the first royal Cambodian government in 1993.
The repression is
all the more obvious in Cambodia’s presently new political landscape: For the
first time ever there is a united democratic opposition represented by the
CNRP, the only opposition party to hold seats at the National Assembly where it
stands nearly neck-to-neck with the ruling CPP.
In this context,
and because Cambodia is supposed to follow a British-style parliamentary democracy
(or Westminster) system, any elections without the participation of the
opposition leader or his deputy – both Kem Sokha and myself being unfairly
discarded from the election process for obvious political reasons – would look
really odd and unacceptable.
Because they are
the recognised bearer and defender of universal values such as democracy and
human rights, the West is in the unique position to assess and question the
legitimacy of unpopular regimes sometimes called “pariah states” in the worst cases.
This ability to deny, confer or condition legitimacy is part of that “soft
power” whose might can be greater than the power of the gun or the power of
money.
Sam Rainsy
CNRP president
CNRP president
No comments:
Post a Comment