July 19, 1998

Given the climate of fear that he has created, the fact that opposition parties are denied full access to radio and television and barred from holding political rallies - restrictions that do not apply to his own Cambodian People's Party, Hun Sen has every reason to feel confident of victory in the July 25th election.

Because these elections will be neither free, nor fair, nor fully representative of the Cambodian people, the Clinton administration should demand that they be delayed - and should do so immediately, before it is too late.

These elections are highly significant for the future of Cambodia, specially in light of last July's events. While democratic elections will not cure all of Cambodia's political ills, they will offer the country the opportunity to move away from the dark days of the recent past.

The people of Cambodia deserve better than the brutal dictatorship they have been forced to endure, and the international community, led by the United States, can help bring this about by refusing the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on these elections until certain critical steps are taken. These include:

- Giving the opposition parties more time to rebuild after having been decimated by Hun Sen and the CPP following the coup last July.

- Establishing an independant judiciary to protect the constitution and investigate human rights abuses such as last year's Easter Sunday grenade attack, and to provide some encouragement to opposition leaders and activists that becoming politically active no longer invites retribution and perhaps, even death

- Recruiting and training monitors to ensure that the election is fair and free and that voters are not intimidated. While thousands of observers monitored the 1993 election at more than 11,000 polling places and 1,600 counting stations, barely 300 are expected to be on hand for this year's balloting. Fraud will be uncheckable, and probably inevitable, unless more election monitors are provided.

- Concluding a truce between warring military factions of Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranaridh. Failure to do this before the elections only increases the likelihood that violence will be part of Camboida's future.

There are additional reasons to postpone this election. For example, 70,000 Cambodian refugees in Thailand, and thousands more Cambodians living in other countries, have not been authorized to register and participate in the elections.

The overseas Cambodians, many of them living in the United States, make up as much as 5 percent of the eligible population and perhaps bring the strongest convictions about freedom and democracy to the political scene. They should be allowed to participate.

In a free and fair election, the people of Cambodia might well chose Hun Sen as their national leader. But, for his government to have any ligitimacy in the international community, this election cannot take place in the current atmosphere of fraud and intimidation.

Any election must be, and must be seen by the rest of the world as, a free exercise of the franchise by all Cambodians. The Clinton Administration should make clear to the leaders of Cambodia's government that nothing else will do.