The People's Prince

In the Cambodian village of Svay Rolom last week, a sarong-draped man stepped from his dugout canoe to the Tonle Bassac River's bank, strode purposefully into a cabin's hushed interior and stood solemnly before Svay Rolom's mekhum, the village chief. The citizen's purpose: to vote in Cambodia's first election since the end of French colonial rule.

With a sheaf of ballots, each stamped with its party's symbol, the voter squeezed into a booth. There he folded one ballot into a tight pellet. Emerging, he tossed the unneeded cards into a wastebasket, dropped the pellet through the ballot box's slot, bowed to the mekhum, returned to his canoe and glided away on the pea-soupy Tonle Bassac.

Clean Sweep. More than half a million' others, 60% of the electorate, also voted. Their ballots gave a clean sweep to the firmly anti-Communist Sangkum (Socialist People's Community) Party, organized only six months ago by popular, chubby 32-year-old ex-King Norodom Sihanouk. The neutralist Democratic Party, which controlled the last National Assembly before its dissolution in 1952, polled a mere 18% of the votes. The Communists got almost none except in their stronghold of Kampot, shared with other minor parties only some 12%. Sangkum candidates won all 91 seats in the new Assembly, a victory of almost embarrassing proportions for Prince Sihanouk. Apologizing for success, he declared: "If I wanted to fake the elections, I would never have the effrontery to scrounge all the seats."

The explanation was chiefly that in a brief time Sihanouk had built the Sangkum into a well-oiled political machine, with party committees in every village. Already revered when king, he seized the common touch by barnstorming in a red convertible and scattered his message by sound truck and radio (TIME, Sept. 12).

Democrats charged that the pre-election arrest of some of their members amounted to intimidation. On election day itself, observers of the Geneva Truce Commission, consisting of Canada plus suspicious representatives from neutralist India and Communist Poland, made spot checks, found no irregularity. The only violence stained not the Sangkum, but the Democratic Party with blood--a Sangkum Party chauffeur was murdered.

Like the Greeks. Police forthwith arrested five Democrats, including the party's secretary-general. "We will release them when they promise not to make themselves a nuisance," said Sihanouk. At the chauffeur's cremation, Sihanouk him self ignited the sandalwood stake and bowed low while monks in saffron-hued robes prayed and flames licked the pink coffin. Then the young man who no longer reigned made it quite clear that he nevertheless plans to rule.

He will not accept public office, said ex-King Norodom Sihanouk, but he will direct governmental affairs through a party steering committee. To get his people's ideas, he added, he will soon convene a sort of town meeting of the nation in the Pnompenh soccer stadium, "as in the days of the ancient Greeks."

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