HUN'S THE ONE

...The Joint International Observation Group, of course, was beset by no such anguish over what to say...

...But, of course, there is more to an election than the balloting and the count...

...The day before, the international observation group—which consisted not only of the EU countries but also of such democratic paragons as Burma, Vietnam, and China— had lowered the bar...

...This is not the Cambodia I know," he said...

...That's when the Euro spoke up...

...Reports from around the country held that, aside from one Khmer Rouge rocket attack near their stronghold in Anlong Veng, all was proceeding peacefully...

...Agents could be present from any of the 39 parties participating in the election (my favorite: The Bee Hive Party...

...By the time the dust had cleared, the prince and other opposition politicians were in exile, badly needed foreign aid was suspended, and Hun Sen was denied Cambodia's U.N...

...In fact, we were never able to run down the story about those 40,000 ballots...

...There is the campaign, and there is what happens with the results...

...But it does precious little benefit to the world's most brutalized, and bravely resilient, people...

...International election observers fulfill two roles: witness to the world, making it harder for the powerful to commit electoral fraud, and comfort to voters, who need reassurance that someone is watching out for chicanery...

...No longer was the issue whether the election was free and fair, but whether it was "broadly representative" of the people's will...

...The box was then sealed in waterproof blue bags adorned by images of Shiva, the creator and destroyer—an appropriate icon for the election...

...Then the Khmer Rouge, supporting themselves from their jungle exile through illegal trade in logging and gems, began to unravel...

...Yet even in the wake of the coup, Hun Sen pledged that elections already scheduled for July 1998 would take place...

...These observers, like those of us from overseas, were there for two reasons: to see whether the balloting went according to the rules, and to encourage citizens to vote their conscience...

...It read, in part, "The relative success of the balloting and the counting thus far cannot negate the violence, extensive intimidation, unfair media access and ruling party control of the administrative machinery that characterized the pre-election period...

...HUNS THE ONE Cambodia's Strongman Stages an Election By John Buckley Battambang, Cambodia The night before Cambodia's July 26 election, a local election monitor rushed into the lobby of Battambang's Teo Hotel, looking for the Americans...

...Do you mind...

...By the time the polls closed, we were in Anlongvil, which we had been led to believe might be a site of irregularities...

...Only the three main parties—Hun Sen's CPP, Prince Ranariddh's Funcinpec Party, and the eponymous Sam Rainsy Party—had organizations sufficient to be present in polling stations nationwide...

...A full two-thirds of Cambodian adults had submitted to CPP fingerprinting on party cards...

...The Norwegian, alas, was right: We were observers, without the capacity or the mandate to investigate...

...It is right for the United States to set a high standard for what constitutes an acceptable election, in any country...

...mission viewed as the fundamental question: whether we were participating in a gross exercise of geopolitical cynicism...

...Officials there sealed the ballot box with the signed concordance of the party agents and domestic observers...

...The Europeans seemed to adhere to the cynical wisdom that Hun Sen is going to be around one way or another, so why not accommodate him...

...In the stalemate that followed, Hun Sen, who had been installed by the Vietnamese occupiers in 1985, was able to use his political network and superior political skills to muscle the effete prince into virtual inconsequentiali-ty...

...Government departments that, like Noah's Ark, had two of everything— two ministers (one from the CPP and one from Func-inpec), two deputy ministers, and so forth...

...It took the National Election Commission 10 days to declare Hun Sen the winner, with 41.4 percent of the vote...

...The next morning, in the stations where ballots from 16 precincts were to be tallied, we watched the simultaneous striptease of the boxes, as first the blue tarps and then the seals and locks were taken off...

...my least favorite: The Liberal Republicans...

...By late morning on Election Day, in tiny villages amidst what were once the Killing Fields, 90 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots...

...The folk belief—intended by the party—was that village chieftains would be able to match fingerprints to ballots...

...The campaign had been notably unfree and unfair, with the CPP getting, by independent analysis, eight times the news coverage of the opposition, whose lives were in danger...

...At stake was Cambodia's return to international recognition, coupled with the resumption of aid, investment, and even tourism...

...If this keeps up," said Thayer, "I'll be out of a job...

...By the time the American delegation returned to Phnom Penh, we were convinced that what we had seen—the balloting and the counting—had about the same degree of technical competence and integrity as could be found in any election in the United States...

...The distrust was mutual...

...around investigating...

...Nearby were instructions for how election officials should insert the index finger of each voter in the bottle of ink, to prevent a repeat visit to the voting booth...

...There was also an elaborate protocol for what to do if the voter did not have an index finger—a not inconsequential consideration in a country where, after 30 years of war and the widest distribution of landmines in the world, roughly one in every 250 people is missing a limb...

...The willingness of the Europeans to bless the Cambodian election prior to its even taking place was an act of acquiescence to Hun Sen, and a ratification of his coup of a year ago...

...To ensure that no single village's vote was identifiable, ballots from multiple precincts were dumped into large bags and mixed...

...Throughout the morning, individual ballots were inspected and affirmed by members of the counting groups, as well as by teams of party agents and domestic observers who roamed the cramped counting house...

...If this had indeed been a miracle, reports from the opposition that gross irregularities had taken place would have to be proven false...

...Yet a three-page, nuanced analysis reflecting reservations about whether the election could be deemed a success, given the intimidation and violence that had preceded it, was summed up in international wire stories by that phrase, "Miracle on the Mekong...

...Five years ago, the United Nations dedicated 18,000 troops and nearly $3 billion to administer the first nominally free election in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge takeover...

...seat...

...With that, we Americans took down the local monitor's complaint, while the European Union cast hostile glances our way...

...So the Americans chiseled a balanced statement...

...Two Cambodian observer groups had individuals in each of the 16 polling stations we were to visit...

...When the Americans met in Phnom Penh to discuss what we'd seen and what we should say about it, we were faced with two different realities, which had to be reconciled...

...In a nation that has known nothing that approaches normalcy for more than a generation, the yearning was for, minimally, peace, and, ideally, a freely elected and legitimate government...

...Ranariddh had 32 percent, Sam Rainsy 14 percent...

...In mid-July, the Americans had declared themselves independent of the group, releasing a statement critical of the climate under which the ruling Cambodian People's Party was conducting the election...

...The party had done the same thing in 1993, when people pocketed the gifts and went on to vote against Hun Sen and for Prince Ranariddh anyway...

...At midnight before Tuesday dawned— many hours before the first official tally would come in from the provinces— they had been pleased to declare the election "free and fair...

...The role we played may well have been symbolic, but it served notice to Hun Sen that, with so much riding on international approval, overt electoral mischief was ill advised...

...No one knew what would happen this time...

...I'd like to remind everyone that we're just observers here," said a highly disdainful Norwegian member of the Joint International Observation Group, the largest consortium of observers...

...Earlier in the day, he had exuded confidence, despite the fact that more than a dozen opposition-party activists had been murdered in the run-up to the election, the first since Hun Sen seized power in July 1997...

...To their credit, the Cambodian people appear to have overcome these obstacles and to have made possible a successful exercise in national self-determination...

...It was then taken outside and placed on a makeshift caisson affixed to a motorcycle and driven off to a counting station with a convoy of witnesses in tow...

...The stainless steel ballot box, one of 11,700 provided by the Japanese government, was on a table in the center of the room...

...For weeks, there had been rumors about the various means by which the CPP would know how a person had voted...

...It may be safer that way...

...The reaction of the young Norwegian (dryly identified in the Phnom Penh Post as a student of "the mathematics of conflict resolution") to a report of electoral irregularities raised what the U.S...

...That image had to be weighed against the almost joyous balloting process we had observed...

...delegation present to observe both the polling and the subsequent count of ballots, pressed forward to hear what the man had to say...

...We can't go John Buckley is a Washington novelist and has held senior positions in several presidential campaigns...

...Yet now the man was rattled by the discovery that nearly 40,000 ballots in one district had been removed from sealed polling kits...

...By early afternoon, Nate Thayer, the Far Eastern Economic Review reporter whose 1997 interview with Pol Pot was the scoop of the decade, was marveling at how well things were going...

...The statement was released at a news conference two days after the election...

...Former congressman Tom Andrews, a member of the U.S...

...He was not a timid man...

...He staged a coup, in which more than 100 of Ranariddh's allies were murdered...

...What was not just a rumor was that, to solicit support, CPP agents had offered voters packets of the cooking element MSG (really), checkered scarves, and cash...

...pressured Ranariddh to accept Hun Sen as "second prime minister...

...By 7:00 the next morning, in a Buddhist wat in the district where the previous evening's mischief had occurred, all the party agents and domestic observers were in place...

...The Phnom Penh Post—contrary to the tenor of the general media—had printed the gruesome photograph of a murdered Funcinpec electoral observer whose legs were literally skinned...

...To the surprise of virtually everyone, Prince Ranariddh handily won, but when Hun Sen threatened renewed civil war, King Sihanouk and the U.N...

...Members of the delegation were instantly dispirited, however, when one of our leaders, former congressman Stephen Solarz, reverting to the soundbite habits of a seasoned politician, referred to the election as the "Miracle on the Mekong...

...When Pol Pot was deposed and put on trial by the Khmer Rouge in the spring of 1997, military forces loyal to Prince Ranariddh negotiated for the surrender of the remaining Khmer Rouge, and Hun Sen saw the military balance teeter in his opponent's favor...

...The result...

...Next to it was a small bottle of India ink, three tons of which had been delivered to Cambodia direct from India...

...By late spring, most of the exiled politicians had come back to participate, largely under pressure from the European Union...

...Actually," said Andrews, "what I'm observing is someone complaining about the integrity of tomorrow's vote...