By Nick Johnson
PHNOM PENH — A new interim coalition government finally emerged on June 18, nearly three weeks after the end of Cambodia's UN-run elections. The agreement promises an element of stability and the chance to begin desperately needed reconstruction over the next three months while a new constitution is drafted.
Hun Sen, leader of the governing Cambodian People's Party (CPP), said his 2
.5J243>1
55DJ0>/
.5>2
55D> hour meeting on June 18 with FUNCINPEC leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh "was very good, very good". CPP spokesperson Sok An said, "It is historic that we came to an agreement on how to share power".
Final election results gave FUNCINPEC 45.47% of the vote and 58 of the 120 National Assembly seats. The CPP, which has governed since it helped in 1979 to liberate the country from the Pol Pot regime, won 38.22% and 51 seats.
Heavily backed by the United Nations Transitional Authority for Cambodia (UNTAC) and foreign powers including the US, FUNCINPEC tapped into the sentiment for peace. During the campaign UNTAC departments, especially the Information Component, did much to ensure a FUNCINPEC victory.
Facing the legacy of 13 years of economic blockade and the Khmer Rouge war funded by western powers, not to mention the weight of the UNTAC apparatus opposed to it, the CPP did remarkably well.
No other institution, including UNTAC, did more to guarantee the security and safe conduct of the election than did the CPP government, which deployed its armed forces to defend both the Cambodian people and the electoral procedure.
The sudden appearance of UN heavy armaments and truckloads of heavily armed UNTAC soldiers in the streets of the capital in the days following the election — when they had been largely absent
during the most dangerous periods in the preceding 12 months — was a testimony to UNTAC's undeclared by primary role: to ensure the CPP was removed from power.
However, FUNCINPEC could not hope to form a government or adopt a constitution without the support of the CPP. It does not have the numbers in the Assembly, where adoption of a constitution requires a two-thirds majority. Nor does it have armed forces or the personnel to run the government and its ministries.
In the coalition, Hun Sen and Ranariddh will jointly lead the government under the authority of Prince Sihanouk, who will be chief of the armed forces.
US officials in Washington have indicated they will now accept a coalition. The US was instrumental in stopping Sihanouk's first attempt to put together a coalition immediately after the election.