of seats, to form the Royal Government. In addition, members of the Assembly who
intend to form the Royal Government must obtain a vote of confidence from the
Assembly, who must pass the vote by a majority of two-thirds.
The difficulty begins with Article 82. If enough anti-government politicians stay
away from the Assembly, no president of the Assembly can be elected. Without a
president of the National Assembly to recommend a prime minister to the king, no
government can be formed. The operation of these provisions was brought into
sharp relief in the aftermath of the July 2003 general elections in which Hun Sen’s
CPP won seventy-three of the 123 seats in the National Assembly. Despite this
convincing victory, Hun Sen was unable to form a new government because
his party was nine seats short of the constitutional two-thirds majority required to
govern. It took him a whole year to win over FUNCINPEC to form a two-party
coalition.^61 As Robert Albritton noted:
Provisions of the Constitution designed to force warring parties to
collaborate in forming a government are now an obstacle to
democratic consolidation. The two-thirds requirement to organize
the Parliament subjects any party to political blackmail, even after
winning a substantial majority of the seats...The inability of the
majority party to form a government is a source of political, economic,
and social instability that will pose a threat not only to democratic
progress but to the development of the economy and the ability of
Cambodia to integrate into the international community.^62
Article 82 was amended in March 2006 to provide that the election of the president,
vice-president and all members of the various committees be obtained ‘by an
absolute majority vote of all Members of the National Assembly’. In the July
2008 elections for the National Assembly, the CPP won 58 per cent of the
popular vote, translating into ninety of the 123 seats in the Assembly. For the first
time, it could form the government of Cambodia without a coalition.
iv. thailand
Of the countries discussed in this chapter, Thailand has drafted the most consti-
tutions. Since the Chakri kings surrendered absolute power in 1932 , Thailand has
promulgated and discarded seventeen constitutions.
63
The first of these was the
(^61) See Oskar Weggel, ‘Cambodia in 2005 : year of reassurance’ ( 2006 ) 46 ( 1 )Asian Survey 155 at
155 ; and Melanie Beresford, ‘Cambodia in 2004 : an artificial democratization process’
( 2005 ) 45 ( 1 )Asian Survey 134 at 135.
(^62) Robert B. Albritton, ‘Cambodia in 2003 : on the road to democratic consolidation’ ( 2004 )
44 ( 1 )Asian Survey 102 at 109.
(^63) For a brief account of Thailand’s pre- 1932 constitutional history, see Andrew Harding and
Peter Leyland,The Constitutional System of Thailand: A Contextual Analysis(Oxford:
Hart, 2011 ), pp. 1 – 10.