Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns to stir up election

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Bergpark Wilhelmshohe in Kassel unfolds on nearly one square mile in central Germany. The 17th century hillside park (“bergpark” means “mountain park” in German) features elaborate water displays, a 27-foot statue of Hercules atop its spire and gardens. (Uwe Zucchi / EPA)

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The hill forts consist of six outposts located across the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India, including Amber Fort, above. These impressive structures, with their eclectic architecture, contained urban centers, trading posts, temples and palaces (and in some cases, they still do). (John Moore / Getty Images)

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Established in the 13th century, the University of Coimbra is one of Portugal’s oldest universities, influencing later institutions in the country and beyond. The school’s buildings include the Royal Palace of Alcacova, above. (Paulo Novais / EPA)

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These 12 sites illustrate the influence of the Koryo Dynasty from the 10th to the 14th centuries, including Koryo Songgyungwan University, above, which was established more than 1,000 years ago. (Jean H. Lee / Associated Press)

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The rice terraces, developed over 1,300 years by the Hani people, is a part of a farming system that incorporates livestock such as buffalo and fish in the cultivation of red rice, the region’s primary crop. The terraces stretch across over 64 square miles in the province of Yunnan in southern China, from the Ailao Mountains to the Hong River. (STR / AFP / Getty Images)

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El Pinacate is located in the Sonoran Desert in northern Mexico, south of Arizona. The site includes 10 large and visually prominent circular volcanic craters, including El Elegante crater (pictured), which measures about 4,593 feet wide. (Roberto Vazquez / EPA)

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The historic core of Agadez, which dates back to the 15th century, is composed of housing, palatial structures and religious buildings. The quarter is characterized by mudbrick architecture, including the Grand Mosque (pictured). (Pierre Verdy / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mt. Fuji’s stark beauty has inspired artists and poets for centuries. The iconic stratovolcano, often snow-capped, rises more than 12,000 feet on Honshu Island and is Japan’s highest mountain. (Everett Kennedy Brown / EPA)

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Two-thirds of the Tianshan Mountain range, which stretches across Eastern Europe and Asia, lies within China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The Xinjiang Tianshan encompasses a wide range of landscapes, including canyons, snow-covered peaks, wetlands and glaciers. It also serves as a habitat for endangered species such as the snow leopard. (Guang Niu / Getty Images)

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This national park in Tajikistan, which lies in Eastern Europe and borders China, encompasses one of the world’s most tectonically-active regions in the world. It also contains the world’s highest natural dam, behind which Lake Sarez (pictured) lies, and some of the world’s deepest gorges. (AFP / Getty Images)

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Mt. Etna, located in eastern Sicily in southern Italy, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupting over a dozen times this year alone, including this eruption in April. Its volcanic activity has been well-documented as well, with records dating back over 2,700 years. (Carmelo Imbesi / Associated Press)

By Carol J. Williams

July 19, 2013 4:31 PM PT

The joyous scene of Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s return to Phnom Penh from self-imposed exile Friday has stirred expectations – some would say unrealistic ones – of young voters throwing their support behind an alternative to Southeast Asia’s longest-reigning leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Rainsy isn’t likely to be allowed to run in the July 28 election that Hun Sen, already in power for 28 years, is expected to win by a landslide.

But with Rainsy’s ardent campaigning plans for the next week, his Cambodian National Rescue Party could loosen the leader’s vice grip on all levers of power. Rainsy’s opposition faction, which has united with the former Human Rights Party to strengthen its joint run for seats in parliament, is hoping to improve its clout in the legislature at least enough to break Hun Sen’s supermajority of 90 in the 123-member body that gives him the power to amend the constitution whenever it suits him. Rainsy’s faction has 29 seats.

Hun Sen remains popular in Cambodia’s vast rural reaches, where older voters retain vivid memories of the murderous Khmer Rouge government that terrorized the country in the 1970s. The 61-year-old prime minister is credited with erasing the vestiges of Khmer atrocities in his long years in power, but Rainsy and his allies plan to target their campaign for change on the younger generation that didn’t live through the nightmare years. In the four years that communist dictator Pol Pot was in power, as many as 3 million Cambodians died in summary executions and the slave-labor conditions of collective farming and government work brigades.

Cheering youths were prominent among the estimated 100,000 who turned out to greet Rainsy upon arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport and along the streets leading into the capital center. The Nation, a Bangkok daily that covered the former finance minister’s tumultuous return, noted that 1.5 million young Cambodians are eligible to vote for the first time in the election barely a week away. In all, 9 million are eligible to vote.

“A lot of young voters gathered with cheers to listen to Sam Rainsy’s first speech via Skype last Friday night in Kandal province,” The Nation reported. “The younger generation is the group tipped by many political observers as the major voters for Sam Rainsy’s party.”

Rainsy had been living in France since fleeing criminal charges in 2009 stemming from his activism over foreign land grabs and border disputes with Vietnam. He was convicted in absentia in 2010 and sentenced to 11 years in prison on the charges that he contends were the work of the prime minister to stem the rise of a political rival.

At the request of Hun Sen, Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni last week pardoned Rainsy in a move hailed by the prime minister as a gesture of political reconciliation. It was, however, done only after the U.S. State Department threatened to cut Cambodia’s $70-million annual foreign aid unless the government acted to make the forthcoming elections more fair and inclusive.

Rainsy’s parliamentary seat was revoked with his conviction, and his name was stricken from the voter registry. It remained unclear after his return whether he will even be allowed to cast a ballot on June 28.

Radio Free Asia reported that lawyers for the opposition faction are combing the law books and legislative records for precedent to back their campaign to put Rainsy on the ballot. The deadline for registering a candidacy has long passed, but the legal experts argue that the royal pardon should expunge the punitive measures that stripped Rainsy of his elected office.

Rainsy’s return evoked the same atmosphere of euphoria exhibited by Burmese supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, when the Myanmar military dictatorship began easing its repression of the opposition leader there. But Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won an overwhelming majority of legislative seats when allowed to compete with the military junta in 1990, drawing the crackdown that kept her under house arrest for most of the following two decades. Neither the former Sam Rainsy Party nor its now-allied Human Rights Party ever came close to attaining that level of popularity.

“Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party remain clear favorites to win this election,” The Diplomat, a Southeast Asian foreign policy magazine, reported Friday. It credited the prime minister’s enduring political strength to “unprecedented growth in the aftermath of three decades of war which ended in 1998.”

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