Cambodia’s fragmented opposition parties are promising to work together, rather than compete against each other for votes. All it took was another crushing victory at the polls for the country’s ruling party.
Few expected the governing Cambodian People’s Party, with Prime Minister Hun Sen at its helm, to lose in nationwide local elections held here June 3. Yet the way in which it won—securing a commanding 97 percent of commune chief seats nationwide—was particularly decisive.
If the election was a barometer to gauge the political climate ahead of key parliamentary elections scheduled for 2013, then it showed that a great deal of work lies ahead for what is still a divided opposition.
Cambodians vote Sunday in elections for their local commune councils. In a country where the prime minister, Hun Sen, maintains a tight grip on power, opposition parties are trying to be realistic about the outcome. A feature on the 2012 Cambodian commune elections for VOA.
Arn Chorn-Pond was only a child when the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. Sent to the labor camps, he survived by learning how to play revolutionary songs on his flute. But he watched as those around him were murdered or starved to death. Now in his mid 40s, Arn is sharing his story with a new audience: he’s the main subject of a new American novel for young adults.
Journalist Dan Southerland covered the war in Indochina for the American newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. Southerland returns to Cambodia from time to time, part of his attempts to make sense of the devastation. On a journey across the Mekong River nearly 40 years later, memories of the past are never far from the surface.
Another entry in the less than universally acclaimed iPhone web series, Observed the Other Day. This time, I coerce my overworked smartphone into action aboard the 3:07 to Badulla. Grainy shots of Sri Lanka's gorgeous hill country await.
