Executive Summary
This survey of voter knowledge and awareness was conducted for two reasons. One was to alert the voter education community to areas where, in light of our findings, education needs seemed to be greatest.
The second
purpose of our study was to establish a baseline of voter knowledge against
which the impact of the voter education campaign could be assessed, in order to
improve and strengthen future voter education campaigns in
We reported the progress of
our study and our preliminary findings to the fortnightly meetings of the Joint
Voter Education Committee throughout the pre-election period. We reported the highpoints of the final
results of our survey in a brief Khmer and English publication, which was
distributed widely to voter educators through COMFREL, COFFEL and KID. In that publication we stressed the
challenges implied for voter education efforts and included recommendations for
action that might be taken. (The highpoints are reproduced in the annex to this
report).
We envisage a follow-up
impact survey that would attempt to draw the lessons from this campaign by considering
the views of voters regarding their experience with the registration and voting
process. The general aim would be to
learn how successful the voter education campaign was in helping voters
understand and exercise their voting rights effectively. At the same time, we would want to learn how
successful specific educational contributions of the National Election
Committee and the NGO’s were in reaching and informing the electorate.
From the point of view of
laying the basis for an eventual impact assessment of voter education
effectiveness, the findings of this baseline survey can be summarized under two
rubrics. The first is knowledge of the
procedures for the elections and awareness of the election process. The second is the channels and means by which
information on the election was obtained.
The references in the summary below are to sections and subsections of
the main report.
A. Procedures and Process of the
Elections
1. Registration.
We found that the electorate
was largely uninformed about any registration procedures (III.A.3.Q.50), which
was understandable because our survey was conducted in March and April 1998,
before the National Elections Committee was fully formed and functional. However, we found widespread understanding of
the need to re-register for the 1998 elections (III.A.1.Q.49). Our survey showed that 92% of respondents
expressed an intention to register
(III.A.2.Q.52).
2. Specific voter knowledge.
Our survey showed that 93%
of respondents expressed an intention to vote in the 1998 elections
(IV.A.1.Q.69), and they seemed very well aware of the fact that elections were
going to be held soon (IV.A.2.Q.53). But
there was a massive ignorance about voting procedures (IV.B.1.Q.67, 68), with
91% of respondents saying they did not know the voting procedures and 96%
saying they did not know where to vote.
3. General voter knowledge.
Voters also seemed quite
uninformed about what the 1998 would be for—for persons, parties or offices
(IV.B.4.Q.54), and when elections would be held (IV.B.5.Q.55). Of our respondents, 95% did not know the name
of their Member of the National Assembly, suggesting a significant gap in
understanding of how a vote translates into the election of a candidate who is
accountable to a constituency (IV.B.6.Q.77).
4. Feelings about pressure, intimidation,
danger.
Our respondents generally
did not expect either pressure or force to be applied on them to affect their
voting (V.B.1.Q.111, 112). We found 91%
of respondents said they would not obey an order from a powerful person to vote
for a particular party (V.B.2.Q.118), and 82% said their vote would not be
influenced by a gift of money (V.B.3.Q.113).
Only 19% of our respondents
expressed fearfulness about the upcoming elections compared to 62% who said
they were not fearful (VI.B.1.Q.81).
Only 15% thought elections were dangerous compared to 35% who held that
they were not dangerous. But, on the other hand, 50% of our respondents took a
wait-and-see attitude to this question and said they didn’t know if elections
would be dangerous (VI.B.2.Q.85).
5. Attitudes about obligations to vote for a
party.
The electorate surveyed by
CAS seemed deeply uncertain about the voting obligations entailed by a party
membership commitment (like a thumbprint on a form), or a pledge in public to
support a party. We found that 28% of
respondents said party members must vote for that party, while 24% said no,
party members need not vote for their party and 48% said they didn’t know
(V.B.4.Q.71). We found that 35% of
respondents felt a person must vote in accord with his or her pledge, while 38%
said no, a pledge was not binding, and 27% said they didn’t know (V.B.5.Q.72).
6. Attitudes about the secrecy of the ballot.
The electorate we surveyed
seemed fairly evenly divided between 47% who thought the ballot in the
forthcoming elections would be secret and 52% who said they didn’t know if the
elections would be secret or not (VI.A.Q.116).
This may be compared to 78% of our respondents who thought the UNTAC
elections were secret versus 4% who thought they were not secret
(II.D.1.Q114). This division on the
question of ballot secrecy is echoed by 45% of our respondents who thought a
winning party would not punish those who had voted for another party (assuming
the winner somehow had learned who had voted against him), and the 46% of our
respondents who said they didn’t know if a winning party would punish those who
voted for other parties (VI.B.4.Q.84).
7. Knowledge and awareness of female voters.
For questions involving
knowledge of procedures or awareness of the political process in
In regard to voting
procedures, 95% of our female respondents said they didn’t know what they were,
compared to 85% of male respondents (IV.B.1.67, 68). In regard to obligations entailed by party
membership, 52% of our female respondents gave the “don’t know” reply, compared
to 42% of male respondents (V.B.4.Q.71).
In regard to expectations
about the secrecy of the ballot, 57% of our female respondents replied “don’t
know,” compared to 44% of male respondents (VI.A.Q.116). In regard to the expectation that a winning
party might punish voters for other parties, 52.5% of female respondents
answered “don’t know,” compared to 36% of the males (VI.B.4.Q.84).
In regard to an
understanding of how a multiparty system works, 64.7% of our female respondents
replied “don’t know” to a question about whether a loser in one election could
stand again in another election. Of our
male respondents, 45.4% gave this “don’t know” reply (VI.B.5.Q.73).
See also VII.A.2.Q.122, 123 on
perceptions of men's need to advise women on voting.
8. Awareness of the voting rights of vulnerable
groups and minorities.
Our survey showed
overwhelming affirmation of the voting rights of women (VII.A.1.Q.120, 121),
the very poor (VII.B.Q.132, 133), the illiterate (VII.C.Q.130, 131) and the
disabled (VII.D.Q.134, 135).
However in regard to
minorities, the acknowledgement of their voting rights was diminished by some
uncertainty among our respondents.
Regarding non-Buddhists (like
the Muslim Cham minority), 32% of our respondents gave the “don’t know” reply
to a question about their right to vote (VII.E.1.Q.136). Regarding the highland tribal minorities, 37% of our respondents gave the “don’t
know” reply to a question about the voting rights of these indigenous peoples
(VII.E.2.Q.137). Regarding immigrant Vietnamese, 64% of our
respondents gave the “don’t know” response to a question about the voting
rights of this group (VII.E.3.Q.138).
Regarding overseas Cambodians
or “dual passport holders,” 58% of our respondents gave the “don’t know” reply
to the question about the voting rights of these Cambodians (VII.E.4.Q139).
B. Channels for information and
effectiveness of voter education messages.
1. Registration.
Besides having been too
young, the major reason our respondents gave for not having voted in the UNTAC
elections was not having registered to vote (II.A.2.Q.27). A follow-up should ask why respondents did
not vote in 1998. Our findings suggest
that the impact assessment should consider how effectively reliable information
about registration was provided to the electorate.
2. The elections.
Our survey included
questions on how voters had learned about the UNTAC elections (II.B.Q37). We learned of the importance of government
officials, radio and friends and relatives as sources of information. Our survey also asked how voters had become
aware of the forthcoming elections and by what sources respondents obtained
information about the elections (IV.A.3.Q.56, IV.B.2.Q.148). We again noted the relative importance of
electronic media, radio, television, and contact with friends, relatives and
neighbors.
A follow-up should ask in detail what information
activities of COMFREL, COFFEL, NEC, the political parties and government
officials made the most memorable impression as far as providing useful
guidance to voters in these elections.
FINAL REPORT
BASELINE
SURVEY OF
VOTER
KNOWLEDGE AND AWARENESS
Introduction
This survey was
designed with two aims in mind. First,
to serve as a pre-test of the knowledge level of the Cambodian electorate
regarding various aspects of registration and balloting. We hoped to highlight the topics about which
the electorate was particularly uninformed, and to draw attention to sectors of
the population with specific voter education needs. The second aim is to provide a baseline upon
which a post-test of voter knowledge could be conducted after the voter
education campaign. The post-test would
assess the success of the voter education campaign and provide lessons for
future voter education campaigns in
The first aim, to serve the
needs of the voter education community in their pre-election activities, was
served by a publication of a brief paper in Khmer and English. That paper, Highpoints of the Baseline Survey of Voter Knowledge and Awareness,
CAS Occasional Paper No. 2, (May 1998) is included as an annex to this Final
Report. We noted the highpoints of our
findings that were particularly relevant to stress in voter education training
so those gaps in voter knowledge revealed by our findings could be recognized
and remedies found. We distributed 1000
copies of this paper widely in the voter education community, especially to COFFEL
and COMFREL and KID, which had training programs at the province, district and
commune level. We tried to assure that
our findings would be in the hands of all voter education trainers down to the
commune level, at a time when village-level volunteers were being trained.
The second aim, to establish
a baseline against which an impact study of voter education effectiveness could
be conducted is provided in this detailed report of our findings.
The survey instrument we
used was devised in English in the course of meetings with voter education
curriculum developers in Cambodian NGOs, in light of the materials they were
developing and using. After a pre-test
of the Khmer translation of the instrument, the instrument was streamlined and
simplified.
Methodological Considerations
Instrument Construction
The pre-test of the Khmer
version of the questionnaire revealed an aspect of Khmer culture that may be
useful to note for other survey-based studies.
We discovered that the Khmer language of the pre-test instrument had
been written in a high literary register.
This reflected the academic and intellectual qualities of our
researchers who translated the questions from English. As excellent translations, the Khmer questions
had a hypercorrect, formal, literary character.
But the questions in Khmer
were also formal for another reason, which was to assure proper courtesy to
whatever reader might encounter the document.
During the pre-test, I noticed that the interviewers first read the
question, and then “translated” the question into colloquial Khmer of the oral
register. This translation subtly took
into consideration who the informant was, and how the informant reacted during
the reading and then the translation of the questions.
We soon realized that each
interviewer was going to add his or her own interpretations in their
translations from the literary register to the oral register, depending on the
researcher’s assessment of the respondent’s reaction to the questions.
In order to minimize this
unwanted element of diversity introduced by the interviewers themselves, the
questions had to be recast in an acceptable oral form, but in writing. This proved to be very awkward for my
researchers. They worried that if a person
of high status or power should see the written questions in such an oral form,
that person might get angry with the researcher because the obligatory marks of
formality (encoding deference) expected in a message addressed to him, were
absent.
Our efforts to simplify what
could be said in the Khmer question fed back to an adjustment of what the
English question could ask. Questions
that attempted to ask for scaled responses and to probe nuances in attitude
that were part of the original questionnaire design gave way to more straight
forward questions that could be asked and answered simply in Khmer. The English and Khmer versions of our
instrument are reproduced in an annex to this report.
Sampling
Lacking a census, and within
a limited budget and timeframe, we were unable to design a probability
sample. The guidelines or quotas we used
in selecting categories of informants reflected the aims of the research. We wanted to assess voter knowledge and
awareness especially in remote rural locations.
We wanted to be certain to include voter-aged women, disabled and
minorities. These are the kinds of
groups usually underrepresented in a non-probability sample.
Our aim was to replicate the
general characteristics of the Cambodian population, at least as far as gender,
rural/urban, Khmer/non-Khmer characteristics were concerned. Our guide here was the Demographic Survey of
Our scope covered a
considerable diversity of Cambodian provinces.
The sixteen provinces (or municipalities) and forty-seven districts (or sangkat) we visited are listed in an
annex. One criterion we considered was
to survey different ecological zones, where the basis of livelihood might be a
little different, for instance, flood plain villages near the lake and upland
rain dependent rice areas. This was not
carried out according to a systematic plan however. The main practical criterion of our selection
of villages to survey was that they be accessible to a four-wheel drive vehicle
during the dry months March and April.
Mindful of our mission to highlight voter education needs, our team
probably biased the selection in favor of communities far from surfaced roads,
but on laterite roads, away from urban areas and into
At the end of a series of
weeklong surveys to Northwest, South, Southeast, and
Survey Execution
Our team consisted of eight
persons. There were two expatriates, an
American academic who was project director, and a Dutch UNV who worked on the
data with SPSS 7.5 for Windows. The
Khmer interviewers consisted of a senior male academic who was the field
coordinator, another male and female academic and a young man and two young
women who were graduates. These
interviewers would usually arrive in a village and each work singly to find men
and women, old and young, at home or at work, who would agree to be
interviewed. The team usually worked in
at least two different locales each day, separated by a lunch break. The afternoon village visits were usually the
most productive because by
Our researchers found that
they had to overcome a typical initial assumption by the interviewees that the
questionnaire was being conducted on behalf of a political party. On these grounds a number of people we
approached refused to participate in the survey. Many of our pre-test respondents had balked
at questions which had originally been designed to be answered "yes"
or "no." They forced us to
include a "don’t know" reply to many of these questions. As our survey proceeded, we were surprised at
how large the "don’t know" response was. We sensed that many of these responses
reflected a genuine lack of knowledge.
But we also sensed a degree of reluctance to commit to a "yes"
or "no" to us, unknown strangers.
Although we tried to assure respondents of the neutrality and non-political
stance of the Center for Advanced Study, the reader should keep in mind the
background of uncertainty about our motives that was probably never entirely
dispelled.
A large proportion of those
who did agree to complete the questionnaire was reluctant to reply to the open
ended questions. We lacked the time
needed to gain rapport and overcome the natural wariness of peasants toward
urban investigators. This probably
accounts for the rarity of responses to the open-ended questions, and the
brevity of the responses we were given.
On the other hand, by the
end of the interview, when we reached last question (“If someone came here to
answer one question about the elections, what would you ask?”), the closure of
the interview often gave rise to intense requests for more information about
politics, voting and the elections. In
general we sensed a great hunger for more specific information about the
elections, which we were in no position to provide. Our impression overall was that a voter
education campaign was eagerly awaited by the electorate in the villages we
surveyed.
I. Background Demographics
The aim of these demographic descriptions of
our respondents is to indicate that the diverse elements of the Cambodian
population were taken into account and to show how the proportions in our
sample replicate the demographics of
A. General
Characteristics
1. Q. 8. Rural-Urban distribution
This dichotomy proved to be
a thorny issue among our Khmer interviewers, as we discovered in our pre-test
analysis. Long, inconclusive arguments
about how the rural boundary should be defined as one left a town were finally
settled in practice by driving far enough along dirt roads to communities that
everyone agreed were “rural.” In the
end, our distribution closely mirrors the findings of The Demographic Survey, which finds a 85.6% rural and 14.4% urban
distribution, based on administrative jurisdictions and boundaries.
2. Q. 9. Gender
The gender distribution in
our sample shows an overrepresentation of female respondents, if compared to
the Demographic Survey, which finds
47.84% male and 52.16% female. Part of
the explanation for this collection error was due to our special concern to
include the voice of women in our survey, especially from remote rural areas. But another reason for the discrepancy is
also that the people our interviewers were likely to meet during the day in a
village were women.
3. Q. 12.
Age
Our sampling quotas
encouraged the interviewers to attempt to replicate the actual age distribution
in the Cambodian population. A chief
criterion for selection as a respondent to our survey was, obviously, that the
candidate be a potential voter, 18 years old or older.
If the Demographic Survey findings on age distribution were recalculated
to eliminate those under voting age, we would find that the 18-24 group would
be 20.18% of the voter aged population; the 25-30 group would be 19.55%; the
31-40 group would be 24.34%; the 41-50 group would be 16.02%; and the 51+ group
would be 19.97%. (An accumulation of
rounding off errors affects the precision of these figures).
The age distribution of our
respondents mirrors the general age distribution of voter aged persons, but
slightly over-represents the younger voters, 18-24 years old, and
under-represents the oldest voters, 51+ years old. This again is due to our field methods. In a village during the day young women
householders with the time to answer a questionnaire are more likely to be
encountered than other age groups. Very
old people are also likely to be encountered in the village, but many of them
declined to be interviewed. They often
pleaded a lack of understanding or hardness of hearing. If they did agree to be interviewed, many of
these potential older informants were distracted after answering a few
questions and did not complete the questionnaire.
B. Family characteristics
1. Q. 15. Marital Status
The marital status of our
sample replicates the findings of the Demographic
Survey fairly closely. The Demographic Survey finds not yet married
28.3%; married 60.9%; separated/divorced 1.4%; widowed 9.4%.
All the charts above suggest
that a fairly representative sample of the Cambodian population was obtained,
although we did not conduct the kind of probabilistic sampling that would
enable us to estimate with some level of confidence the extent to which the
findings in our survey were likely to differ from what we would have found by
studying the whole population.
C. Social
characteristics
1. Q. 11.
Ethnicity of Respondents
Non-probabilistic sampling
is especially likely to under-represent minorities. Accordingly we made special efforts to set
quotas for our sample that would include members of non-Khmer communities. Most of the CAS researchers on this baseline
survey project had worked on an earlier CAS project to study the ethnic
minorities of
While voting age was stated
explicitly as a criterion for participation in the survey, we did not raise the
issue of whether the respondent was actually legally entitled to vote. This is an issue for voter registration
officials to decide. We were interested
in the level of knowledge and awareness of the elections in these communities
and wanted to get enough respondents from minority peoples to determine if they
had distinctive voter education needs.
Our proportion of 86% Khmer to 14% minority may be slightly
disproportionate in favor of minority groups.
There is much controversy
about the statistics on minorities in
2. Q. 14.
Years of Schooling
Educational level was
included in the survey to enable us to see if there were any trends in the
cross-tabulations of schooling with the knowledge, awareness and attitudes
assessed in the survey. Those trends
will be mentioned below. We included
schooling in a Wat (or other religious school) as well as in a government
school in this variable.
3. Q. 16. Occupation
No specific quotas for
occupation or profession were set for the interviewing. This chart confirms the mainly rural focus of
our research, but also indicates by the diversity of occupations represented
that non-farming respondents were not neglected. The category “other” mainly includes people
who marked two or more occupations on the questionnaire (like farmer and
trader), but also includes people whose occupation was other that any of the
categories listed on the questionnaire.
4. Q. 25. Income
We included questions on
roof type, cooking fuel, possession of rice fields, oxen and some durable
consumer goods, which enabled us to discern fine differentiation in
socio-economic level in the rural, farming population. However, from the point of view of attempting
to identify simple associations of socio-economic status and voter attitudes,
the most useful variable was income. Our category “low” corresponds to a stated
income of 0-50$/month. “High”
corresponds to $51 and above/month.
It must be noted that most farmers actually handle
little cash over a year, giving rise to a response of very low income. What the income category chart probably
really indicates is a division between those in a semi-subsistence economy and
those in a cash economy.
II.
Voter Perceptions of UNTAC elections
We included questions on the
UNTAC election to develop some sense of a comparison with attitudes toward the
forthcoming elections. From the point of
view of the implications for the voter education campaign that we wished to
serve, we were especially interested in why respondents had not voted in the
UNTAC elections. From the point of view
of assessing voter education impact we were particularly interested in how the
voters had obtained information about the election procedures.
A. Participation in
UNTAC elections
1. Q. 26. Experience with voting in UNTAC elections
If the respondents to our survey who were too young
to have voted in the UNTAC elections are excluded, then the incidence of voting
in the UNTAC elections among our respondents who were of voting age in 1993 is
89%. Compare the estimate of 89.5% of
voting incidence given, for example, in Trevor Findlay, Cambodia: the Legacy and Lessons of UNTAC, SIPRI Research Report
No. 9 (OUP 1995, 82).
2. Q. 27. Reasons for failure to participate in UNTAC
elections
The large number of cases
responding that they were too young (under 18) in 1993, and who would now be
between 18 and 23, is consistent with the age distribution in our sample.
The next most frequent
reason given for not voting in UNTAC elections was not having registered. These findings, taken with the responses “not
having understood what to do” and “did not know there was an election,” present
a challenge to voter educators to attempt to reach this largely remote, rural
electorate that missed the UNTAC election, with messages that explain the need
to register and clarify what the elections are about.
B. Voter Knowledge of
UNTAC Elections
One of the main aims of an
impact survey of the voter education campaign will be to identify the media and
the messages that were most effective in reaching and informing the
electorate.
This chart highlights the
importance of local government officials, mainly of the SoC, in informing the
voters about the UNTAC elections. Those
local authorities are, by and large, still in their positions in the CPP
dominated local government, so we would expect an impact survey to show a
similar strong response for local government officials as a major source for
election information.
The importance of friends
and relatives as sources of information is consistent with the predominantly
oral culture of Cambodian peasantry.
Voter educators who would take advantage of the natural gossip networks
of rural communities would construct their messages to assure that they could
be transmitted effectively along these channels.
C. Influence on
Voting
1. Q. 101. Using gifts to influence voters in UNTAC
Vote buying is such a highly
developed art in neighboring countries in the region that we might expect the
practice to appear in
It will be interesting to follow-up this question in
future surveys to see if a vote-buying trend emerges.
2. Q. 104. Using promises to influence voters in UNTAC
An election campaign is
almost by definition characterized by promises to the electorate. The promises we listed in our questionnaire
were developed during the pre-test with villagers and include only fairly
concrete or visible promised benefits.
Future surveys, reflecting more Cambodian experience with election
campaigns, should probably include the incidence of promises of more abstract
benefits, like security, peace, welfare and development.
D. UNTAC Election
Milieu
1. Q. 114. Perceptions of the preservation of secrecy
The electorate was extremely
confident that the 1993 UNTAC balloting was secret. This can be compared with the prospects
expected for a secret ballot by our respondents in the months preceding the
1998 elections. (See Section VI. A.
Q.116 below).
Perceptions of the secrecy of the balloting should
obviously be followed up in a post-election survey.
2. Q. 80. Feelings of fear during UNTAC elections
The question of fearfulness
surrounding the 1993 elections may be usefully compared with the feelings of
security and fearfulness expressed by our respondents regarding the 1998
elections. (See Section VI.B. below).
This again is a natural question to follow-up after
the 1998 elections.
III. Registration
These questions were intended
to gain information to aid the voter education campaign, in the months before
the National Elections Committee got its voter registration drive underway with
EU support.
A. Knowledge of
Registration
1. Q. 49. Need to re-register after UNTAC
At the time of our survey
nearly a quarter of our respondents did not know if they had to re-register to
vote in 1998. We could discern no trends
in this group. The "don’t
know" response was not significantly associated with rural/urban
differences or gender or income or years of schooling or income level.
This chart probably reflects the general state of
knowledge about registration and presents a clear challenge to the registration
drive to inform the electorate of the need to register in order to be able to
vote.
2. Q. 52. Intention to register
Apparently many of those who
didn’t know if they had to re-register would do so if required. The remarkable strength of response to this
question (and a comparable response to a question about intention to vote, see
Section IV.A.1. Q.69) should gratify the voter education community. The electorate seems extremely receptive to
the idea of registration, but uninformed of the details.
3. Q. 50. Knowledge
of registration location
The challenge to the voter
educators during the registration campaign will be to clarify the place where
one can register, the times, the procedures, the identification papers needed
for registration. At the time of our
survey, very few respondents had any specific knowledge and what they knew was
probably not in complete conformity with the regulations for registration that
were eventually decided upon by NEC.
To draw lessons for the
future, it will be very important to follow up our survey with questions
regarding the timeliness and effectiveness of the voter education process
relating to registration. This segment
of the voter education responsibility was primarily in the hands of the NEC, so
the impact assessment in this area will, in effect, contribute to an evaluation
of the effectiveness of the EU supported NEC voter education training and
implementation effort.
An approach that might yield
useful information for future voter education campaigns would be design an
impact survey to ask what specific messages and what media the electorate found
most appealing in inviting them to register and most useful in instructing them
of the procedures. For instance, small
scanned photographs of the posters that were circulated could be included in
the questionnaire for the respondents to identify and to rank as useful or not.
Difficulties experienced in the registration process
The 35% of our respondents
who gave the "don’t know" response present a very clear challenge to
voter educators, whether from NGO's or NEC, to explain that, under the law, no
payments are necessary to register.
An assessment of the
electorate’s experience of obstacles to registration should be an important
part of a follow-up impact survey.
Questions should be asked about the adequacy of information about the
process, media that were most effective and reliable in informing the
electorate. Questions should also be
asked about the implementation of the registration process (timing, locations)
and treatment by registration officials.
Questions should seek perceptions of the fairness of the evaluation of
proofs of citizenship and age. The
impact survey should also attempt to elicit perceived irregularities and the
efficacy of complaint procedures.
Another line of follow-up in
this area would be to ask respondents their perceptions regarding the
likelihood that non-Cambodians in their vicinity might have obtained
registration cards and thereby obtained proof of Cambodian citizenship.
IV
Voter Knowledge
If the demographics of our
respondents can justify a generalization to the general Cambodian population,
if even in a suggestive way, the overwhelming intention to vote, as shown in
the chart below, indicates that the turnout for the election in 1998 can be
expected to be very high. If the turnout
is actually low, an impact survey after the election should include questions
asking why voters did not follow-up on their pre-election intentions.
A. General Knowledge
and Awareness
1. Q. 69. Intention to vote in the forthcoming
elections of 1998
Although those respondents
answering that they did not intend to vote in the 1998 elections were few, we
tried to learn from the data who they were.
Our findings indicate that 8.1% of our female respondents answered no
intention to vote, in contrast to 5.5% of our male respondents. Ten percent of the young voter group (18-24
years old) answered that they had no intention to vote, compared with 7.1% of
all age groups combined. There was no
difference between rural and urban respondents.
The reasons given for not
intending to vote were most often because of illness, no time, too busy with
young children and too far from the polling place. Other reasons included disinterest and ignorance
about the elections and voting. A very
few respondents answered the open question with comments to the effect that
none of the political parties would be able to improve the situation of the
country.
2. Q. 53. Awareness that national elections were to be
held soon
The respondents who answered
“no,” they did not know about forthcoming elections, consisted of 5.8% of our
rural informants, compared with 2.3% of our urban respondents. Female
respondents were less aware of upcoming elections than men. The “no” replies consisted of 6% of our
female respondents and 4.2% of the males among our respondents. The age categories 25-30 and 51+ were
somewhat less aware of upcoming elections than other age categories. The group 41-50 was most aware. Of those with more than 10 years of
schooling, 100% answered “yes” to this question.
We found that 16% of our
Vietnamese respondents gave the “no” response in contrast to 5.3% of our Khmer
respondents and 0.0% of our Chinese informants.
As noted above (I.C.1.), we did not ask the sensitive question whether
the Vietnamese respondents thought that they were legal voters. The relatively high percentage of our
Vietnamese respondents who gave the "no" response indicates a low
awareness of Cambodian national politics.
The reason for this could be that they are isolated from sources of
information that others use (see next chart).
Our respondents may also have included uninterested non-Cambodians.
Once the registration
procedure is complete, which in effect will answer the question of nationality
and right to vote, it will be important to assess the impact of voter education
efforts to reach
3. Q. 56. Sources of information regarding the
approaching elections
This question asked how the
respondents came to know that there would be elections in the near future. Radio and TV scored very high, reflecting the
strong effort in the largely government controlled media to promote listener
and viewer awareness of forthcoming elections.
Friends and relatives are an important informal channel of
communication. On the basis of a similar
question concerning the UNTAC elections (Section II.B. Q.37ff.), we would expect
government officials to grow in importance as a source of information as the
election nears. But this can be
determined in a follow-up survey.
B. Specific Voter
Knowledge
1. Q. 67, 68. Knowledge of procedures
Knowledge of voting
procedures was quite limited at the time of our survey, as might be
expected. Female and rural respondents
were especially likely to answer "no" that they did not know the
procedures. We found that 94.9% of our
female respondents answered that they did not know the procedures, compared
with 84.7% of the male respondents.
Similarly, we found that 92.3% of our rural respondents versus 82.6% of
our urban respondents answered that they did not know the procedures.
This question asks for
knowledge of procedures which, at the time of our survey, had not been fully
decided upon by national authorities.
Accordingly, the "yes" answers to these questions may actually
suggest a kind of sophistication or confidence in coping with the procedures,
whatever they turn out to be. Rural
respondents and females are either more candid about their lack of knowledge or
are likely to be less confident about their understanding of election
procedures, or both. Those respondents
with more than seven years of schooling tended to give more “yes” responses
than those of less education. High-income respondents tended to give more “yes”
responses than low-income respondents.
At the end of our
questionnaire we asked what question respondents would ask of voter educators
who might come to their village.
Respondents most often asked about what the procedures would be: Would
the ballots look like the UNTAC ballots? What pictures would be on the ballots?
Where would the polling place be? Would they have to dip their finger in ink?
Etc.
Voter educators should bear
in mind that many villagers are not accustomed to dealing with paper, printed
information and writing. Anecdotes from
the UNTAC elections acknowledge this unfamiliarity with literate procedures when
they tell of marks made on the back of the ballot by voters who had held the
paper up to the light to see the party logo on which they wished to make a
mark. These voters were apparently
reluctant to deface the printed side by marking on it.
Another anecdote may suggest
the devices rural illiterate voters have to invent in order to cope with
interpreting printed symbols on paper. A
village informant asked us if the party of his preference would be located on
the same place on the ballot paper as it was on the UNTAC ballot. He explained that he had located the place to
vote in the UNTAC elections by folding the ballot in half each way and marking
the logo where the folds crossed.
The kind of mark on the
ballot that will constitute a valid vote for the party of the voter's choice
must be made clear to voters in the voter education campaign. The difficulties voters encountered in
dealing with the balloting procedures should also figure in a post-election
impact assessment of the effectiveness of voter education.
2 Q. 148. Sources of information about election
procedures
This question was intended
to elicit the channels for detailed information on election procedures with
which the respondents were familiar, to compare with post-election
results. Respondents could mark any
number of responses. The informal
channel of neighbors, radio and TV, and government officials are means we would
expect from the replies to A.3.Q. 56 above.
An impact survey should
reveal what other channels, especially the voter education activities of COFFEL
and COMFREL and NEC, were recognized by the electorate as important sources of
information about the elections.
It would also be interesting
to ask respondents about the specific voter education items that they found
most memorable and informative, jingles, songs, media spots, posters, booklets,
face-to-face meetings with educators etc.
3. Q. 140. Recognition of responsible organizations
The electorate is as yet
quite uninformed about who has the responsibility for organizing the
elections. It remains to be seen in a
follow-up survey to determine if NEC (and the provincial and district election
committees) gain any recognition for their predominant role in organizing
elections, and if these election committees are perceived to be distinct from
the government in the eyes of the electorate.
The fairly high count for
the UN as organizer of the forthcoming elections in July 1998 indicates an
important lack of understanding among our respondents that Cambodians
themselves are running these elections.
By far the largest response
to this question was “don’t know,” which over sixty percent of our respondents
marked.
4. Q. 54. Awareness of what the ballot is aimed to
determine.
This question attempted to
probe voter awareness of the nature of the proportional system to be used to
determine National Assembly seats in a constituency, based on the strength of
party success in the balloting in that constituency. An expectably large percentage of voters
(59%) answered that they did not know what they would be asked to vote for in
the elections.
A follow-up question in an
impact survey should attempt to determine how successful the voter education
campaign was in clarifying the formula by which the raw vote is transformed
into the selection of candidates to take seats in the National Assembly, and
how the Prime Minister is selected.
5. Q. 55. Awareness of specifics of the planned
election
At this point in the
pre-election process, a very large percentage of the electorate was still not
sure in what month the elections would be held.
Many of our rural
informants, whose lives are probably more influenced by the agricultural cycle
and the Buddhist ritual calendar than the twelve-month “international”
calendar, explained that they would know when the elections were happening when
the local authorities summoned them to participate. The local authorities, Commune heads or
Village heads, serve as a broker between the state and the peasantry in
The real challenge to NGOs
that are involved in voter education is to give the peasantry alternative
sources of reliable information to check and balance the undue and often
non-neutral influence of the local authorities on the knowledge and awareness
of the rural electorate.
6. Q. 77. Understanding of accountability of Members of
the National Assembly
Members of, and candidates
for, the National Assembly voice the understanding that they stand for election
in a particular provincial constituency.
But, according to our findings, the constituents in the provinces are
largely unaware of who “their” MP is.
Over 90% of our respondents did not know what an MP did for his/her
constituency once elected.
The voter education campaign
faces the challenge of promoting the democratic ideal of accountability to a
constituency of voters. In the Cambodian
context such a concept is not very familiar, at least as far as Members of
Parliament are concerned.
Some respondents thought an
MP should be like a local informal leader or benefactor and help the people in
villages by building schools, roads and pagodas. Others mentioned that the MPs are persons of
high social rank who are only concerned with advancing their own wealth and
power.
A lady in
He
should know about the well being and worries of the people. He is assigned to help rebuild the country
and should not take what belongs to the government and to the country and sell
it to foreigners.
V. Influences on Voting Behavior
We asked several questions
to try to gauge the village political climate in the months preceding the 1998
elections. Some of these questions were
perceived to be sensitive, but once they were broached in the questionnaire,
often opened a floodgate of anecdote regarding the conduct of some local
authorities. Our research team was among
the first to bring to light the practice of collecting thumbprints to verify
allegiance to CPP in villages. We also
learned of the reestablishment of the krom
or hamlet cell system of PRK days as a CPP device to mobilize grassroots
support for the party.
It will be most interesting
to follow-up these questions about voter expectations in the months before the
elections with a post-election survey of what influences the electorate
actually experienced.
A. Seeking advice.
This chart shows a
remarkable preference among our respondents for asking no one for advice about
voting. The question was asked in a way
that would allow the respondent to mark “yes” or “no” for any or several of the
categories of potential advice givers.
Among our respondents, 70% (680/920) replied that they would ask no
one’s advice. In fact, many of these
respondents also marked husband/wife or elder as they thought over their
initial reply.
The strength of this
response, taken with the enthusiastic intention to vote (see Section
IV.A.1.Q.69), may indicate a resistance in the electorate to attempts to
influence their vote. This might well
presage a stubborn backlash to any systematic efforts at intimidation, however
subtle, that might occur during the pre-election period.
B. Perceptions of
influence upon voters
1. Q. 111, Q112. Awareness of an intimidating atmosphere
The two charts above reflect
responses to questions that attempted to detect a difference in expectation of
external influence on a respondent’s vote between a mild Khmer term for “push
or nudge” and a harsher word for “force or compel.”
Of the age group 51+, 8.6%
expected force to be used, compared with 5.9% of all age groups combined. Of our urban respondents, 11.3% expected
force to be used, compared to 5% of our rural respondents. Of our male respondents, 7.9% expected force
to be applied, compared to 4.6% of our female respondents. The more education respondents had, the more
they tended to give a “yes” response to the question about force, and the less
they tended to give a “don’t know” response.
These findings suggest a
parallel to the pattern of responses to questions on specific voter knowledge
of balloting procedures (IV.B. Q.67, 68).
The older voters, males, the urban and more educated respondents seem
relatively more sophisticated in their knowledge of the procedures of voting
and, at the same time, seem more likely to expect external influences of an
intimidating sort.
2. Q. 118. Response to specific personal pressure to
vote for a party
The response to this
question is consistent with the resistant attitude of the Cambodian electorate
expressed toward external influences, which we detected in the replies to V.A.
Q. 87 above. The category of respondents
with zero years of schooling tended to give more “yes” responses to this
question than those with some schooling.
A 36-year-old Khmer male
business owner in Battambang said:
I
would vote for a party if a powerful person told me to because I am afraid of
people with power. But if there were
protection for my life, I would not vote for such a person.
A 51-year-old Khmer farmer
woman from Kampot said:
I
would vote for a party if a powerful person told me to because I am afraid of
them. We are not clever; we cannot read
and write.
A 41-year-old Khmer farmer
woman from Kandal said:
I
would vote for a party if a powerful person told me to. We just want happiness, and we are afraid
that we will be punished.
3. Q. 113. Vote buying as a form of influence
This strong response to
resist vote buying is consistent with the trend of resistance to external
influence on voting behavior discernable in all the findings of this section,
so far.
However is also possible
that our respondents gave the response that they guessed we wished to
hear. Many respondents noted that they
would accept any money or gift that a candidate or party might offer, but that
they would still vote the way they wanted to.
A follow-up survey should
try to detect the form, extent and effectiveness of vote buying as a possible
feature of an emerging Cambodian electoral process.
4. Q. 71. Influence in the form of entailing
obligations by party membership
The responses to this
question show a departure from the resistant attitude our respondents generally
showed toward external pressures on their voting. Here, the action of enrolling in a party
seems to moderate that resistance. This
finding may explain why political parties might move aggressively toward
establishing their lists of party members.
Cambodian parties understand that the electorate, especially in rural
areas, seems to link party membership with a degree of obligation to vote for
that party, even under conditions of a secret ballot. Of our rural respondents, 29.3% thought a
member of a political party had to vote for that party, while only 19.5% of
urban respondents thought so.
As for the “don’t know”
reply to this question, 52% of women respondents said “don’t know” compared
with 41.6% of our male respondents. Of
the age group 51+, 66.4% replied “don’t know” compared with 48% of all age groups
combined. The higher the education
level, the less our informants gave the “don’t know” response.
In a village, a thumbprint
on a paper is associated with a “contract.” Such instruments are connected with
the world of legal mechanisms and the threat of state-sponsored sanctions. Our
sense is that the don’t know response to this question does not so much
indicate a lack of information or knowledge in the electorate, as a widespread
uncertainty about the real significance and consequences of membership formalities.
The challenge presented to
voter educators is to inform the electorate of the meaning of multi-party
democracy envisaged by the Cambodian Constitution, and to stress the safeguards
that are in place to assure secrecy of the ballot.
5. Q. 72. Influence in the form of entailing
obligations by pledges and promises
During our research we heard
a number of anecdotes about how local authorities would obtain pledges to vote
for CPP by having villagers swear over a glass of water that had been suffused
with a magic charm, or that had a bullet in it.
We also learned that villagers were heard announcing their pledge over a
loudspeaker from the pagoda.
The attempt to invoke
traditional supernatural sanctions associated with a person’s word or oath or
promise probably accounts for the increase in affirmative and negative
responses and a decrease in don’t know responses compared to the question above
(Q. 71), which related to the more rational-legal consequences of party
membership.
According to our findings,
36.2% of rural respondents agreed that a pledge entailed an obligation while
only 29.3% of urban respondents thought so.
The respondents of Kampong Thom, Koh Kong and Pailin were more likely than
respondents from other provinces to answer “don’t know” to this question. While the respondents from
These findings probably
reflect differences in sophistication between people in the city and the
countryside in assessing the pertinence of connecting magic and religion to
politics.
VI.
Perceptions of the Climate Surrounding Elections
The aim of these questions was to gauge voter
expectations regarding the conditions of secrecy, safety and security during
the elections.
A. Perceptions of
Ballot Secrecy
Men tended to believe the
ballot would be secret more than women (53.8% of male respondents versus 42.7%
of female respondents). Women were more
likely to give a "don’t know" reply (56.6% of female respondents
versus 44.2% of male respondents).
The responses to this
question can be compared to a similar question posed for the UNTAC elections in
Section II.D.1.Q.114. It will be very
important for a follow-up survey after the election to assess the electorate’s
view of whether the secrecy of the ballot was maintained.
Those who thought the ballot
would not be secret cited several main concerns. One was the absence of UN or International
monitors. Another was the expectation
that the votes would be counted in the polling place (a recent NEC decision
has, in fact, called for vote counting at some level higher than the
village). Another concern expressed was
lack of trust in the officials working at the polling stations, especially if
there were any delays in vote counting.
B. Perceptions of
Voter Security
1. Q. 81. Awareness of fear
There was little difference
between male and female respondents to this question. However, of our urban respondents, especially
in
The youngest age group,
18-24, registered the highest level of fearfulness of all age groups. This is probably the natural trepidation felt
by young adults entering political maturity in
Among ethnic groups, 66.7%
of our Chinese respondents expressed fearfulness. They were primarily urban respondents and
were probably worried about unsettled and insecure conditions in the city. Of Vietnamese respondents, 24% expressed
fearfulness, probably because this group is often singled out for violent
treatment in unsettled conditions.
2. Q. 85. Awareness of danger
Half our respondents
expressed uncertainty about whether elections would bring events full of
danger, accidents and casualties. Of our
female respondents, 54.7% said they didn’t know if elections would be
dangerous, compared with 43.5% of male respondents. This difference is probably not a matter of a
gender disparity in knowledge or information, nor does it reflect differences
in fearfulness (see Q. 81 above). The
difference in “don’t know” replies between Cambodian men and women probably
indicates a gender difference regarding the level of public discord that is
perceived to constitute a dangerous condition.
Of urban respondents, 26.3%
answered that elections were dangerous, compared with 13.1 % of rural
respondents. Our respondents with more
education tended to give more “yes”
responses than respondents with less education.
This is consistent with the responses to fearfulness in Q. 81 above.
The older the respondents,
the less often they answered “yes” to this question. This again may reflect the life experience of
danger that the older adults endured through the DK period, compared with
conditions now.
Of the 15% of our respondents,
who did think elections were a dangerous time in
A 20-year-old male student
in Battambang said:
The
time is dangerous because before the elections there are no rules. There will be panic, banditry while the
leaders think only of their party’s interest.
A 33-year-old Khmer female
trader from Prey Veng said:
It is dangerous because they
hate it when we vote for a party that they don’t like.
A 28-year-old Khmer male
laborer in Kandal said:
In
A 27 year old Konkat Cen NGO
worker in Banteay Meanchey said:
The
party or the actual government that loses will not want to give up any power to
the winner and they will create autonomous zones, stage a coup or do other
actions that make elections dangerous in
3. Q. 82, 83.
Perceptions of decrease in danger with the presence of monitors
The purpose of the two
questions charted above was to identify any difference in confidence of the
electorate in regard to the presence of Cambodian NGO monitors at the polling
places, versus confidence in International monitors.
The large-scale mobilization
of international monitors on the model of UNTAC is certainly out of the
question. So the challenge presented to
the Cambodian NGOs is to build-up their confidence rating in the eyes of the
electorate as an effective monitoring presence.
One of the best ways to do this is by serving as an effective vehicle
for voter education at the village level.
An impact survey should
reveal the evolving public assessment of Cambodian NGOs as an effective force
in civil society for educating the electorate and for monitoring and evaluating
election related activities.
4. Q. 84. Perception of likelihood of post election
retribution
This question grew out of
our pre-test in which a number of respondents explained that they feared the
dangerous aftermath of elections if the ballot turned out not to be
secret. In fact, only a small minority
of respondents expects retribution by the winning party on voters for other
parties. This could be an indirect
confirmation of the findings above (Q.116) regarding voter confidence that the
ballots will remain secret.
The higher the educational
level of our respondents the fewer “don’t know” responses they gave. The lower income level tended to expect
punishment more than the high-income group.
Of our female respondents, 52.5% answered “don’t know” to this question
compared to 36% of our male respondents.
The reason for this gender difference is probably like that mentioned
above for Q. 85. Men and women may have
different thresholds for assessing security and danger.
5. Q. 73.
Perception of the function of an opposition in a multiparty democracy
This question aimed to probe
the understanding of the electorate on the nature of multi-party democracy and
the function of an opposition, by asking if a losing party could stand again in
future elections. The very large “don’t
know” response seems to reflect genuine lack of knowledge about the nature of
parties in a system of recurrent elections.
It remains to be seen in future surveys whether voter education can be linked
to changes in voter attitudes towards the function of an opposition between
elections and during elections.
Of our rural respondents,
60.8% gave the “don’t know” response to this question, in contrast to 34.4% of
urban respondents. Of female
respondents, 64.7% gave the “don’t know” response, in contrast to 45.4% of male
respondents. Of the age group 51+, 75%
gave the “don’t know” response compared to 57.2% of all age categories
combined. Of those with more than 10
years of schooling, 80% answered “yes” to this question, and gave a very low
rate of “don’t know” responses.
Education and relative sophistication of general knowledge of the
dynamics of multi-party politics are revealed in these differences, and
parallel the findings in other questions, e.g. specific knowledge of the
elections (IV.B.Q.67, 68), perceptions of the likelihood of pressure on the
voters (V.B.1.Q111, 112) and feelings of fearfulness (VI.B.1.Q.81).
The trend for elderly, rural
and female respondents to show high “don’t know” responses to questions that
involve knowledge of elections suggests that these sectors should receive
special attention from voter educators.
We strongly recommend that women in the rural areas should be a special
target for appropriate messages designed to raise their knowledge of elections
and the political process. Such a
campaign would enable this important sector of Cambodian society to gain an
effective voice in the electorate.
C. Open Questions on
Democracy
1. Q. 74. Awareness of the meaning of elections in a
democracy
Perceptions of Reasons for Elections
Q.74
'Why do you think we have elections?'
We asked several open
questions with the hope of gathering impressions from our respondents and
possibly to classify the responses in a way that would summarize the sentiments
expressed. One question was “Why do you
think we have elections?” The main
categories of responses we can discern relate to an increase in benefits that
elections may bring and an improvement of the political process that elections
represent. Respondents associated
elections with hoped-for benefits such as the possibility of peace, increased
welfare, happiness and prosperity. And
respondents associated elections with the possibility of choice of leader or
the possibility of change in the political situation for the development of the
country.
A few comments our
respondents made may convey some of the flavor of their sentiments:
A 30-year-old Khmer male
laborer from
I
think the elections will bring us democracy, which means that there will be no
pressure from any party or person.
A 28-year-old Khmer male
laborer from Kandal province said:
We
have elections to choose one leader, and not “co-“ as before, who has the high
devotion to our mother country and is good for all, not racist.
A 48-year-old male Khmer
farmer from Prey Veng said:
We
have elections in order to choose a government representative who can defend
our village.
A 63-year-old Khmer village
woman from Battambang said:
I
don’t know why we have elections. I go to vote because some one calls me to
vote.
A 29-year-old female Khmer
farmer from Kep said:
We
have elections because we don’t have a true/real King.
2. Q. 75. Perceptions of the meaning of democracy
Perceptions of "Democracy"
Q.
75. 'What do you think democracy is?'
We asked our respondents to
give their definition of "democracy." Again we could distinguish
responses that emphasized the benefits that a democratic regime was supposed to
bring and responses that emphasized the improvements in political process that
democracy represented.
On one hand, respondents
associated democracy with a regime that brought such benefits as freedom,
rights, welfare, well being, and justice without corruption. On the other hand, respondents associated
democracy with a political process that expresses the interests or the voice of
the people, that allows all people to vote and to elect officials, and that
creates a non-dictatorial or non-communist regime.
Some of the responses are as
follows.
A 39-year-old Cham man
working for an NGO in Phnom Penh said:
Democracy
means equal rights for men and women, young and old, for all ethnic groups and
religions.
A 28-year-old Khmer male
laborer in Kandal said:
Democracy
is a doctrine that puts public opinion first.
However the last time [the last elections] this word was only used as a
curtain.
A 20-year-old Khmer female
student in Phnom Penh said:
Democracy
means to use elections as the way [to chose leaders], not to use weapons.
A 28-year-old Cham man from
Phnom Penh said:
They
take the people as the boss, and decide by opinion of the majority.
A 22-year-old Khmer male
student from Battambang said:
The
people take decisions on everything. The
people chose their representatives and use their power through their
representatives.
There was also a sprinkling
of respondents who confused “democracy in Cambodia” with "Democratic
Kampuchea." For example, a
52-year-old Khmer male farmer from Prey Veng said:
It is
the Pol Pot regime.
The
existence of this possible outlandish misunderstanding of political terminology
in Cambodia suggests the extremes of the challenge faced by a voter education
campaign.
3. Q. 76. Understanding of the concepts
"free" and "fair"
Perceptions of "Free and
Fair" Elections
Q.76
'What do you think it means for elections to be free and fair?'
The
responses to this open question fell into two main categories. One group emphasized that the elections
should be fair, true, honest, according to the law, secret, correct, and
correctly counted. The other group
emphasized that the elections should be free, without force, violence or
intimidation, giving people freedom, rights and happiness.
The
28-year-old Khmer male laborer in Kandal, some of whose comments were noted
above, had this enigmatic observation to contribute:
Free
and fair is the wish of the intellectual but also the thorn in the eye of the
ignorant people.
A
25-year-old Khmer male government official in Battambang said:
Free
and fair is an election that is controlled and observed by the EU and UN,
without pressure, intimidation and cheating of the ballot papers. The winner will govern the country and the
loser goes out of power.
A
30-year-old Khmer male farmer from Kampong Speu said:
Free
and fair is the neutrality of authorities.
If they lose the elections, they don’t claim power.
VII. Knowledge of Voting Rights of Vulnerable
Groups
A. Rights of Women
1. Q. 120, 121. Perceptions of participation of women in
voting
The electorate we surveyed showed an overwhelming
response in favor of the rights of women to vote and in favor of positive
encouragement for women to vote.
2. Q. 122. Perceptions of the need for men to guide
women in voting
Of the male respondents to
our survey, 53.6% answered "yes," women should seek advice from men,
while only 44.1% of our female respondents answered “yes” to this
question. Conversely, 50.2% of our
female respondents answered “no” to the question should women seek men’s advice
on voting, while of our male respondents, only 39.9% answered “no” to this
question. The "don’t know" response was quite low, indicating that
people had clear opinions on this matter.
The near equality of yes and
no responses could be interpreted in several ways. On one hand, there is a familiar tendency in
public affairs in Cambodia for men to predominate. Viewing elections as a public matter we might
think them to be a man’s domain, hence a high frequency of “yes” responses to
this question. On the other hand, in
private matters like the household and its economy, Cambodian women are
accustomed to a predominate role in decision making. In so far as voting is seen as secret or as a
private matter, we might expect a strong “no” response to the question,
especially by women.
As noted above (I.A.2.Q.9),
our sample has a preponderance of female respondents out of proportion to the
actual Cambodian gender distribution.
Accordingly, the comparisons of global percentages of "yes"
versus "no" responses can only be suggestive.
3. Q. 123. Perceptions of male sources of women's advice
on voting
We asked respondents who
answered “yes” to the question above (Q.122) to indicate any of the categories
of men from whom women should seek advice.
The chart shows a total of 1255 responses from 440 respondents, meaning
an average of 2.9 categories ticked by each respondent. Expectably, husband and father/elder had the
high scored. Of those who answered this
question, 90% marked husband, 70% marked father/elder, 47% marked neighbor and
25% marked government official.
B. Voting Rights of
the Poor
Poverty and landlessness are
clearly not considered bars to voting by our respondents. This could be interpreted as a positive
legacy of the UNTAC sponsored elections of 1993, in which great efforts were
made to extend the vote as widely as possible.
It may also reflect a general Cambodian view of the rights of
citizenship regardless of social status or wealth.
C. Voting Rights of the Illiterate.
Compared with the findings
on the rights of the poor, there is a slight increase in uncertainty among our
respondents about whether illiteracy could be a bar to voting. Voter education messages are recommended that
can be understood by the non- and semi-literate and that assure them of their
voting rights.
D. Voting Rights of
the Disabled
Compared with the findings
on the rights of the poor and illiterates, there is again a slight increase in
uncertainty among our respondents about whether disability could be a bar to
voting. The specific provision in the
law for the help that should be extended to the disabled should figure in voter
education messages.
E. Voting Rights of Minorities
Overall, our findings on
perceptions of voting rights of vulnerable groups shows consistently high
affirmation of these rights and approval for active encouragement of their
participation in the voting. This
general atmosphere of tolerance, goodwill and inclusiveness among our
respondents provides a contrasting background for the responses to questions we
asked about voting rights of Cambodia’s minorities.
1. Q. 136. Voting rights of non-Buddhists
The category
"non-Buddhist" in Cambodia refers primarily to the significant Cham
Muslim minority that has lived in Cambodia for over five hundred years. The sharp increase in “don’t know” responses
is noteworthy, compared with the earlier responses on rights of women, poor,
illiterate and disabled, who, lacking further specification, would have been
assumed to be Khmer. The underlying
significance of this “don’t know” response to a question about voting rights is
a doubt about the nationality or citizenship of non-Khmer minorities in
Cambodia.
Of our respondents from the
rural sector, 34.8% said “don’t know” to this question, compared with 18.2% of
our urban respondents. Of our female
respondents, 39.2% answered “don’t know” to this question, compared with 22.0%
of our male respondents. While rural
people and women seem less likely to know what the voting rights of the
non-Khmer Islamic minority are, a strong majority of our respondents, 61%,
affirmed that the non-Buddhists do indeed have voting rights as other citizens
do.
2. Q. 137.
Voting Rights of Minority People
"Minority people"
is the code word for tribal highlanders and forest dwellers mainly found in
Cambodia’s northeast provinces. Again, a
large proportion of our surveyed electorate did not know the voting rights, and
implicitly, the citizenship of these indigenous peoples.
An even more marked trend
than we noticed in the earlier question on the Muslim minority appears in the
rural/urban and male/female differences in response to this question. We find that 40.1% of our rural respondents
give a “don’t know” response to this question on hill tribe voting rights, compared
with 15% of our urban respondents. We
find that 44.7% of our female respondents gave a “don’t know” response,
compared with 23.9% of our male respondents.
Rural and female respondents
are likely to be ignorant of the voting rights of Cambodia’s indigenous
peoples. But, again, a strong majority
of our respondents, 58%, affirmed that the hill tribe people did indeed have
voting rights.
3. Q. 138. Voting rights of immigrants
"Immigrants" is a
code word for Vietnamese who have percolating into the Mekong delta and
riverine region for the last three hundred years. The tension between Khmer and Vietnamese is
proverbial and is traced to the unmistakable demographic changes in the delta
region from before and during the colonial period and continuing to the present
day. Khmers typically view the
transformation of the delta as a steady loss of Cambodian territory to the
aggressive and much more numerous Vietnamese farming and fishing
immigrants. A theme that unites Khmer
political parties that are otherwise intensely opposed to one another is a
common fear/hatred of Vietnamese.
This context helps clarify
the responses to this question of voting rights—and thus citizenship—for the
Vietnamese. The “yes” responses
presumably reflect the awareness that many Vietnamese have indeed lived in
Cambodia for many generations and are as integrated with their Khmer neighbors
as, say, the Cham are. The sharp
increase in the “no” response, compared to the findings for non-Buddhists and
hill tribe minorities probably reflects a degree of anti-Vietnamese sentiment
in the electorate.
The “don’t know” response
follows the trends of our earlier findings.
Of our female respondents, 72.8% answered “don’t know” to this question,
compared with 50.3% of our male respondents.
Of our rural respondents, 66.3% answered “don’t know” to this question,
compared with 49.2% of urban respondents.
The extent of uncertainty
about the voting rights of the non-Khmer minorities in Cambodia suggests that a
voter education campaign needs to make a special effort to clarify the
nationality law to all Cambodian citizens so that this multicultural society
can preserve tolerance between the communal groups.
4. Q. 139. Voting rights of overseas Cambodians
Overseas Cambodian is the
code word for Cambodians who left Cambodia during previous regimes, (Lon Nol’s
Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, Peoples Republic of Kampuchea. State of
Cambodia) and who have returned since UNTAC to live and work in Cambodia. These returning persons from overseas,
usually from western countries, often possess the advanced skills that have
enabled them to take up prominent positions in Cambodia in the post-1993
period. However, as is well known, there
is an abiding tension between these returning “dual passport” Khmers and the
Khmers who remained in Cambodia, or who went to the Eastern Bloc countries or
to Vietnam for their studies.
This aspect of tension
within the Khmer community probably accounts for the high level of uncertainty
among our respondents over the voting rights of overseas Cambodians. Of our rural respondents, 60.2% answered
“don’t know” to this question compared to 46.2% of our urban respondents. Of our female respondents, 65.8% registered a
“don’t know” response, compared to 46.4% of our male respondents.
The trend is confirmed again
that the rural and female sectors of the electorate are likely to express the
“don’t know” view. As in the case of
perceptions of the voting rights of non-Khmers, there is probably a mixture
here of anti-overseas Khmer sentiment, that has been exacerbated by political
rhetoric over the last few years, and plain lack of information about the law
regarding who is a citizen. A voter
education campaign may not make much progress against ingrained antipathies
between groups. But voter educators
should certainly face the challenge of combating mis-information and should
make special efforts to remedy the lack of knowledge about the voting rights of
all minority groups.
Annex
Abbreviations
CAS Center
for Advanced Study, Phnom Penh
CNGO Cambodian
Non-Government Organization
COFFEL Coalition for Free and Fair
Elections
COMFREL Committee
for Free and Fair Elections
CPP Cambodian
Peoples Party
DFID Department
for International Development (UK)
DK Democratic
Kampuchea
EU European Union
KID Khmer
Institute of Democracy
MP Member
of Parliament, Member of National Assembly
NEC National
Election Commission
PRK Peoples
Republic of Kampuchea
SoC State
of Cambodia
UNTAC United Nations Transitional
Authority for Cambodia
UNV United
Nations Volunteer
List of Provinces and Districts Surveyed
A. Provinces
1. Phnom Penh
2. Kandal
3. Kampong
Cham
4 Prey Veng
5. Takeo
6. Kampong
Thom
7. Banteay
Meanchey
8. Battambang
9. Pursat
10. Kampong
Chhnang
11. Sihanoukville
12 Kampot
13 Koh Kong
14. Kampong
Speu
15. Pailin
16. Kep
B. Districts
1. Phnom Penh
a. Chamkarmon
b. Don Pehn
c. Prampil
Makara
d. Tuol Kork
e. Dangkor
f. Meanchey
g. Russey Keo
2. Kandal
a. Kandal
Stung
b. Kean Svay
c. Ponhea Leu
d. Saang
3. Kampong
Cham
a. Banteay
b. Kang Meas
c. O Reang Ov
d. Prey Chhor
4. Prey Veng
a. Prey Veng
Town
b. Ba Phnom
Penh
c. Mesang
d. Preah
Sdech
e. Prey Veng
DC
f. Sithor
Kandal
5. Takeo
a. Bati
b. Samrong
c. Treang
6. Kampong
Thom
a. Kampong
Svay
b. Santuk
7. Banteay
Meanchey
a. Serey
Sophom
8. Battambang
a. Battambang
Town
b. Banan
c. Battambang
DC
d. Ek Phnom
e. Mong
Russey
f. Sangke
9. Pursat
a. Krakor
10. Kampong
Chhnang
a. Kampong
Chhnang Town
b. Chul Kiri
c. Kampong
Tralach
d. Rotear
Phiear
11.
Sihanoukville
a. Mittapheap
b. Prey Nuo
c. Stung Hay
12. Kampot
a. Kampot
Town
b. Banteay
Meas
c. Kampong
Trach
13. Koh Kong
a. Srey Ambel
14. Kampong
Speu
a. Kong Pisey
b. Samrong
Thong
15. Pailin
16. Kep
Highpoints of the Baseline
Survey of Voter Knowledge and Attitudes
Center for Advanced Study
Occasional Paper Series, No 2 (May 1998)