Courtney Weatherby, a Southeast Asia research analyst at the Stimson Center, said the youth groups were not yet organized enough to peacefully promote and significantly strengthen democratic rights in Cambodia, adding that they would require further training and support.

“One thing that we’ve seen through a variety of youth organizations present in Cambodia is that there is a lot of excitement about what to do, but organizational capacity and understanding of how to effectively express concerns is something that youth all over the world, not just in Cambodia, often struggle with,” she said.

“Outreach activities are very important in providing youth who are interested in political activities with the useful skill sets so that they can constructively engage with the government and with other actors whose behaviors they are trying to impact,” she said.

CPP struggles to control youth vote

Yet, any political appeals to youth voters or youth campaigns calling for a return to multi-party democracy in Cambodia would quickly run up against a determined ruling party.

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s CPP has held on to power for decades by using force and intimidation against the opposition, control over all branches of government, and by honing a pervasive social-control mechanism that guarantees a majority of the votes on village and neighborhood levels.

These voter control tactics, however, seemed to be faltering during the 2013 elections and 2017 commune elections, when the CPP only narrowly beat the CNRP in contested election results.

Growing youth engagement during the 2013 election, according to many observers, contributed to the reduction of the CPP’s majority in the National Assembly from 90 to 68 seats.

According to the National Election Committee, youth voters, aged between 18 and 30, represented 36 percent or 3.5 million of all 9.5 million registered voters in 2012, some 1.5 million of whom were first-time voters.

The 2013 polls lead some researchers to conclude that a popular united opposition proved difficult to counter with the CPP’s tried-and-tested control mechanisms, which are focused on older voters and village communities rather than Cambodia’s increasingly young, mobile and more educated electorate.

Taking no chances ahead of the 2018 vote, the CPP launched a full-on crackdown last year, dissolving the CNRP and jailing its leader Kem Sokha. Authorities closed down and undermined independent media and civil society, while increased online censorship and controls have resulted in the arrests of activists.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has also tried to gain popularity with students and the young urban workforce by implementing educational reforms and raising the minimum wage.

Recently, the CPP launched a new drive to ensure voter loyalty of its supposed 5 million party members and their families, an investigation by VOA found, and instructions were issued to recruit “new members, especially youth, to support the party.”

Sar said more Cambodian youths should register in order to exercise their democratic right to vote, while they should become better informed of the political issues that matter to them. Some may also want to do grassroots volunteering in order to promote their communities’ democratic interests.

Sar warned, however, that any growing youth activism should be done in a careful way in Cambodia’s political climate in order to avoid repressive reactions from authorities.

“They cannot do any public campaigns anymore in this current situation,” he told VOA after the panel discussion. “Young people need to find alternatives to participate meaningfully in politics.”

Source: By Voa