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| Tuesday, 29 July 2003 |
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Asia Watch : Kampuchea, well-worth watching by Lynn Ockersz Elephants laden with ballot boxes, lumbering through vast stretches of jungle could be a symbol of the virility of the democratic process in Kampuchea. Some of the regions where balloting has taken place in Kampuchea's recent general election, are so remote that elephants are being deployed in the retrieval and transport of ballot boxes. Nevertheless, this is also a pointer to the extent to which people are participating in the election of a new government in a land which was not so long ago derisively dismissed by many as the "Killing Fields" of Asia. However, today, Kampuchea is a Third World country on the mend. Not only is the genocidal barbarism unleashed by the Khmer Rouge regime headed by the dictatorial Pol Pot a thing of the past and the Khmer Rouge itself no longer a politico-military factor to be reckoned with, but there is greater international acceptance of Kampuchea and a political normalization process seems to be taking hold in the country. The news is that the Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, is expected to be returned to power in the general election just held. Final results are expected to be announced by August 8th. Hun Sen's stint at the apex of political power is generally recognized as inflexible but he has managed to bring to Kampuchea, a degree of much-needed political stability, through, among other things, the marginalization of the Khmer Rouge, which, along with some Royalist forces were staunchly opposed to the Kampuchean People's Party regime. A Prime task for the future for Kampuchea, would be the establishment of a broad-based participatory democracy along with the introduction of a more competitive multi-party system. A climate of greater political tolerance would also mark it off as a state which is characterized by rapid democratic development. What needs equal recognition is the role the international community - headed by the UN - has been playing in the political normalization of Kampuchea. In the decade of the Nineties, it was a UN-supervised peace plan, in which major Asiatic powers such as Japan played a major role, which paved the way for the ushering of political stability in Kampuchea. The latter is living, breathing proof that the international community could indeed be instrumental in returning a war-battered, internally-segmented and fractured country to a degree of democratic stability. UN-supervised elections a few years back were a key turning-point in Kampuchea's fortunes. If Kampuchea met with a measure of success, it was because the UN-headed international community was recognized by its key internal players as a legitimate facilitatory body in positive, political change. The UN played an equally significant role in the East-Timorese conflict but the results there have fallen short of expectations on account of their non-acceptance by some parties to the dispute. There is no UN role in the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, but the latter has won wide international acceptance as a fair facilitatory mechanism in the Lankan conflict. As in the case of Kampuchea, Sri Lanka could make some progress in its conflict resolution efforts if the SLMM's authority is recognized by all key internal parties. By defiantly opposing the SLMM on occasion, however, the LTTE would only end up weakening its facilitatory role, much to the detriment of peace. |
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