The undoing of UNTAC’s elections: no mechanism for a transfer of power
David Ashley
The principal focus of the Paris agreements was on the holding of UN-organized elections in which the factions, and any other political parties formed, would compete. It was foreseen that, after no more than three months, the constituent assembly would adopt a new constitution and choose a government which would receive international recognition. This would then signal the end of UNTAC’s mandate, though the sustainability of the political transition — not to mention Cambodia’s fragile peace — would hinge precariously on the factions’ willingness to respect the election results.
Elections as ‘war by other means’
The importance accorded to the elections by the international community was not so much because it insisted Cambodia had to be a democracy, but because it seemed to be the only available means to end the violence. Only through elections could international insistence that all factions cease hostilities and participate in a settlement be reconciled with the factions' refusal to share power. The elections were therefore to be ‘war by other means’ and held open to each of the factions the possibility of achieving final victory in their long struggle for power.
Arguably this strategy was the only one available in 1991 given domestic and international realities. Nonetheless, it failed and its failure can be traced to three flaws in the Paris agreements:
First, the agreements treated the elections as a one-off ‘exercise of the right to self-determination of the Cambodian people', more akin to a referendum on independence (such as the UN had organized elsewhere) than part of a long-term democratic transition. The agreements said nothing about how such a transition would work in practice or how the election results would be implemented. The agreements foresaw how a new government could be formed (albeit after a potentially dangerous hiatus of three months) but not how a new state structure would be put into place.
For example, no clear mechanism was created by which the security forces and bureaucracies of the competing factions would be transformed into a single, apolitical state apparatus. Whilst UNTAC was supposed to control the factional structures prior to elections, it was not empowered to permanently reform and unite them. One consequence was that, when a relatively weak FUNCINPEC won the polls, it had no practical means with which to enforce its democratic mandate.
Peacebuilding delayed
Second, the relatively limited mandate of UNTAC meant that the longer-term challenges of consolidating the peace would be left to the post-election government. Even if UNTAC achieved disarmament, numerous other challenges would remain after its departure. These included uniting the factional armies and administrations, building a viable market economy and creating a new set of laws and institutions to protect human rights, including the first independent judiciary in Cambodian history.
A crucial prerequisite for the other steps would be a genuine willingness by the factions to set aside their differences. But by envisaging a short transition ending in elections, the agreements obstructed rather than promoted reconciliation. Parties contesting elections inevitably stress their differences. But where the contestants are factions who, after a decade-long war, retain their animosities, territories and structures intact, no election campaign can expect to foster reconciliation and goodwill.
Electoral stakes too high
Thirdly, the agreements simply made electoral victory too important an arbiter of power. If the potential rewards of winning the election were enormous — virtually absolute power and patronage, including over the courts, bureaucracy, economy and media— the consequences of losing were more significant still. For the factions relegated to the role of political opposition, there were to be no effective institutions, no enforceable legal provisions, and no indigenous traditions to protect their interests once UNTAC left. Their political and economic interests, not to mention their lives and liberty, would be at the discretion of their former enemies.
What had protected the factions hitherto — their armed strength — was supposed to be given up at precisely the moment of greatest vulnerability. It should have come as no surprise, therefore, that no faction was prepared to accept electoral defeat. Instead each used every means at its disposal in the pursuit of victory and it was ultimately the CPP’s superior military power and dominance of the administration which made the difference.