Overview: In the interest of supporting a free and fair election and the process of democracy in the state of Cambodia, the Tokyo based Japan Center for Conflict Prevention dispatched a six-member multi-national team of observers to work with the Phnom Penh, Cambodia satellite office in monitoring the 2003 Cambodian lower house elections. Through my experience in monitoring the 2003 Cambodian General Elections, I realized both the efficacy and shortcomings of short-term election monitors. I believe that there is a definite value in the very presence of monitors at the polling and counting stations on both polling and counting day. I believe that the sheer presence of observers is extremely effective in deterring election fraud and other irregularities. I am able to conclude this both from the amount of respect I received when entering and monitoring polling and counting stations, and that during the time I monitored the stations, procedures were followed for the most part very carefully.

However, it is what the short-term observer can not see that can both influence election results and lead to false conclusions that the election was conducted in a "free and fair manner." These are the acts of coercion, vote-buying, and threats that occur long before the short-term observers arrive, and are so sophisticated and clandestine that they are mostly only known about on a second or third-hand basis and seldom concretely documented. These kinds of irregularities speak to the importance of the long-term observer. What on the surface is an election that follows election guidelines to the letter and leads major news services and world opinion to believe that the 2003 Cambodian elections proceeded “largely without incident,” is actually backed by highly organized and incredibly elusive forms of coercion. This is a sad reality and a call for more attention and investigation on the part of the international community.

However, if change is to come to Cambodia, it will have to be through those who hold the true power, those who can vote, the Cambodian people. When I look at voting results of inner Phnom Penh that show the opposition party taking sixty to seventy percent of the votes, it is clear to me that what the Cambodian people want is change. However, in Kampong Cham, where the opposition is lucky to claim even thirty percent, I remember that fear still consumes a large part of the heart of Cambodia, and that this fear still runs stronger than the will for change. In a country where nearly 25% of the population was exterminated in a nightmare that consumed a people only thirty years ago, the powerless respect authority in a way that may not be understandable to western scholars and international observers. I believe that Cambodia is slowly awakening from its nightmare, but that it may simply take more time.