His Excellency Mr. Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister of Australia
Canberra
Australia

By kindness of

Her Excellency Ms Margaret Adamson
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Australian Embassy
11, Street 254
Phnom Penh
Cambodia

Mr. Prime Minister of Australia,

As presidents of Cambodia's second and third largest political parties which should form the parliamentary opposition in the new legislature (2008-2013), following the July 27 election, we are taking the liberty of writing to you, especially because Australia is a great friendly country that is a signatory of the Paris Peace Agreements on Cambodia of October 23, 1991.

We wish to bring to your attention the extent to which political developments in Cambodia have departed dangerously from the path laid out in the Paris Agreements.

In general terms, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Human Rights in Cambodia, Mr. Yash Ghai, accurately described the situation by underscoring that “The use of systemic human rights violations has been a rational choice for those who hold power in Cambodia, and who refuse to accept accountability vis-à-vis the law and the people of Cambodia.” (Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for human rights in Cambodia, Yash Ghai, UN Doc. A/HRC/4/36, 30 January 2007, para. 93). He further underlines that “The above analysis shows that laws, institutions, procedures critical to the rule of law are very little respected in Cambodia - especially by the State.” (Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for human rights in Cambodia, Yash Ghai, UN Doc. A/HCR/7/42, 29 February 2008, para. 52). On 19 March 2008, Mr. Yash Ghai, speaking in Geneva about the Cambodian elections, which were a little over four months away, doubts it was possible to hold “free and fair” elections as long as “serious obstacles [remain] to achieving the goal of political pluralism through elections.” For Mr. Ghai, some of these obstacles are “irregularities in the administration of elections that favored the ruling party.”

Regular reporting by Mr. Yash Ghai and his predecessors has made it very clear that ever since the truly democratic elections organized by the UN in 1993 pursuant to the Paris Agreements, all that is left of the democracy put in place in Cambodia, at great costs to the international community, is  a cracking façade.

Since the 1993 elections, each election has been more and more manipulated by the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), in power since 1979, resulting in an ever more perverted democracy, as recognized by all independent national and international organizations.

Predictably, the elections of last July 27 were dubious at best, as recognized by the European Union Observation Mission in its July 29 statement which points that “2008 National Assembly Elections have fallen short of a number of key international standards for democratic elections.” (The European Union Election Observation Mission, Preliminary Statement, Cambodian elections 2008 show some progress but still fall short of key international standards, 29 July 2008, Phnom Penh).

Every day brings more proof of electoral fraud of national scale. We would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the long-term observers of the European Union, some of whom are still in Cambodia today to follow up with progress and the handling of electoral complaints. Electoral experts of the UN Development Program (UNDP) who are based in Cambodia, are also in a position to provide an accurate evaluation of the whole electoral process which spreads out over more than two years. They were the only ones to witness all aspects of fraud which took place at all stages of the electoral process, beginning with the manipulation of the voter list as early as 2006-2007.

Even though the 2008 elections were less marred by violence than previous elections and hence "show some progress", fraud this year took on a more sophisticated or more subtle form and was conducted on a much wider scale. Under the pretext of “cleaning up” voter lists, the National Election Committee (NEC), which is controlled by the CPP, deliberately did the opposite of what it should have done: the NEC deleted names that should have remained on the lists and kept names that should have been deleted. The NEC deleted hundreds of thousands of names of bona fide voters, known to be unfavorable to the CPP, and kept hundreds of thousands of names of ghost voters in order to build up a reserve of fraudulent votes for the CPP. The outcome was that hundreds of thousands of persons without the right to vote (citizens not registered on the lists of the residential commune, or underage, or foreigners) were able to vote by using forged voter identification documents which were methodically provided to them by local authorities controlled by the CPP by using names of these ghost voters. The NEC has in fact killed three birds with one stone: it has succeeded in cleverly reducing the opposition's votes to a large extent, fraudulently inflated the CPP's votes to the same extent, and maintained a decent rate of "voter" turnout.

We have gathered an increasing amount of evidence of such manipulation of electoral lists, which we have published on our website http://tinyurl.com/4eegak . The evidence presented is largely what short-term and inexperienced observers could not see in a sophistically rigged election.

This systematic and massive electoral fraud seriously discredits the results of the  July 27, 2008 election, giving a "landslide victory" to the CPP, recently proclaimed by the NEC but not really reflecting the will of the Cambodian people. This type of fake election is in violation of the Paris Agreements which call for Cambodia “to provide for periodic and genuine elections” as well as "the right to vote and to be elected by universal and equal suffrage." The Agreements also call for Cambodia to ensure that "electoral procedures provide a full and fair opportunity" for all citizens to "participate in the electoral process." (Paris Agreements, Annex 5).

We deplore that election procedures established and implemented by the NEC did not provide a "full and fair opportunity to participate in the electoral process" and that a significant portion of the electorate was denied "the right to vote by universal and equal suffrage." In short, the 2008 election was not "genuine" and is not in line with the spirit and the letter of the Paris Agreements.

Because we want to remain true to the principles of popular sovereignty and political honesty, we have made it known that, so long as our electoral complaints are not reasonably resolved, we will not take part in the swearing-in ceremony scheduled for September 24 by the CPP. This ceremony would normally be presided over by His Majesty the King. In fact, we would not wish to find ourselves in such a solemn occasion, in the presence of at least fifteen MPs elect from the CPP whom we and many independent observers consider as unfairly and fraudulently elected.

An acceptable resolution of a number of our electoral complaints should be through the holding of a re-vote or, at least, a vote recount in a limited number of constituencies (provinces or municipalities) where the opposition has come very close to winning one additional parliamentary seat according to figures provided by the NEC. However, the NEC, which is both judge and judged, has rejected practically all our complaints. Even the most important ones were only “examined” behind closed doors and very quickly dismissed as “groundless”. As of today, the NEC has not allowed a single vote recount, let alone a re-vote, even when first reports of ballot counting from a given polling station conflict with each other and some of these reports seem to have been doctored. When the opposition submits a complaint with some evidence raising some doubt, why doesn't the NEC accept to jointly with the plaintiffs recount the ballots from any given ballot box from any given polling station so as to dissipate any doubt? Are they afraid that a vote recount even for a single ballot box from a single polling station – there are 15, 254 polling stations nationwide – could reveal anomalies/irregularities that are indicative of broader fraud commune-wide, province-wide and nationwide? The Constitutional Council, which is another CPP-controlled institution acting as a kind of Supreme Court, has so far upheld all the NEC's decisions to dismiss the opposition's complaints and requests. There is apparently no other reasons for the two institutions for not allowing any vote recount than the fear to see the CPP's "landslide victory" evaporate following proper verifications.

The CPP has made it publicly known that if we did not participate in the above-mentioned swearing-in ceremony, on the set day, it would deprive us of our 29 opposition-united parliamentary seats and would redistribute them to the CPP, which has already "won" 90 seats (out of 123 seats), and to two small CPP-satellite parties which have already obtained two seats each. If the CPP were to effectively act on its threat, there would no longer be any parliamentary opposition in our country, which would further and in a serious manner contradict the Paris Agreements which require Cambodia to “follow a system of liberal democracy, on the basis of pluralism.” (Annex 5).

In conclusion, we wish to reiterate our most profound gratitude to the Australian people and government for their continued and vigilant support for the cause of liberty, human rights and democracy in Cambodia, and for the generous and precious assistance that Australia has provided to Cambodia since the signing of the Paris Agreements.

Respectfully yours,

Sam Rainsy
President of the Sam Rainsy Party
MP elect following the July 27, 2008 election