Cambodia's 1998 Election

SRP Documents

The documents on these pages were released during the 1998 election period by the Cabinet of the Sam Rainsy Party. The SRP is one of Cambodia's three major parties, along with the ruling Cambodian People's Party and the quasi-royalist FUNCINPEC.

The involvement of outside countries in both the destruction and reconstruction of Cambodia ensured that the National Assembly elections held in 1998 would be the subject of more than usual interest from abroad. The United Nations and the countries who had spent billions on Cambodia's peace process hoped that the 1998 poll, Cambodia's second, would be proof that these expensive efforts had brought a measure of Western-style democracy and not merely reinstalled the same corrupt regime that ruled Cambodia until 1991.

The first two documents set the scene quite well. They were written in my first days as the SRP Cabinet's Communication Officer. I acted as press secretary, writing almost all of the SRP party statements in English from May 18, 1998 to February 9, 1999, which is the period represented by the documents here. Note that I am no longer a spokesperson or employee of the SRP. I have put up this page in the interest of making full information on the 1998 Cambodian elections available as widely as possible to anyone interested.

I have tried to include every SRP statement released during that period. Some advisories for the local press (such as travel schedules and announcements of press conferences) are not included. In addition to statements by the Cabinet of SRP, there are some items that the SRP distributed but are from other groups or individuals. There are also statements by political groupings of which SRP is or was a part. The source of each document should be clear in the heading or the signatures.

--Rich Garella

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