May 25, 1993

A VOTE FOR PEACE IN KILLING FIELDS

Eric Ellis, Choeung Ek

THE number 8985 is etched into the memory and written on the hand of Mr Sun Siv, mayor of this tiny hamlet, 20km south-west of Phnom Penh. That's the number of mutilated corpses so far exhumed from longan orchards in his municipal district, a place the world knows as the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

"I support this election, it means Pol Pot is finished, he is ugly, we can no longer have this man," the 41-year-old Cambodian People's Party official says. That the town of Choeung Ek is supporting the Vietnamese-backed government of Hun Sen in the current election is no surprise. Mayor Siv vividly remembers the hundreds of Khmer Rouge trucks and buses, full of Cambodians, that rumbled down his main street 18 years ago only to rumble back the other way empty.

"I also remember the screams of the people and we could hear the noise when they hit people on the head," the mayor said.

Buses full of Cambodians rolled into Choeung Ek again yesterday, this time with voters protected by Ghanaian soldiers, Bulgarian commandos, Jordanian police and a New Yorker monitoring the polling station not more than 200m from the open graves, still littered by bone fragments.

Enjoying what might be described as a carnival atmosphere of food stalls, villagers and stray buffaloes in front of the converted dispensary, Mayor Siv was making sure most of his 577 constituents were voting for Hun Sen. In a fraught election where the expression of a public opinion could cost your life, Cambodians have so far expressed themselves far more eloquently than anything Gallup might have polled - were opinion and exit polls allowed.

After two days of a six-day vote, the United Nations claims up to 60 per cent of the 4.7 million registered voters have already cast their votes.

Describing the enthusiastic early turn-out as a vote for peace, UN spokesman Mr Eric Falt said 42 per cent of the electorate had voted on Sunday, the opening day of the poll, with some provincial areas around Khmer Rouge strongholds registering a turnout as high as 55 to 60 per cent.

Save for isolated mortar shelling of some polling stations, the election seems to have been incident-free so far despite threats by Khmer Rouge to disrupt polling.

The Australian commander of the UN military force, Lieutenant-General John Sanderson, said: "These have been the most peaceful days in Cambodia for a long time."

The UN, stressing its upbeat message with the view to future possible managed polls in Yugoslavia, South Africa and Somalia, has been at pains to deny various skirmishes reported in the international press.

The campaign of main "opposition" candidate, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, received a significant boost yesterday when his father, Prince Sihanouk, addressed a rally in the capital.

As chairman of the UN-controlled Supreme National Council, the mercurial Prince Sihanouk is supposed to be above politics, but yesterday's triumphant address left observers in no doubt he wanted to remain Head of State in whatever government is formed.

Speaking in French, English and his native Khmer, Prince Sihanouk, once allied with the Khmer Rouge, called for peace, an end to violence and said the elections had so far proved Cambodians desperately wanted to put the past behind them.