Cambodian Voting Brings Hope, Dismay to Refugees : Election: To many here, a trip to the New York polling site--the only one in the nation--is out of the question. Immigrants feel shut out from the historic event.

LONG BEACH —  Sandy Arun Blankenship serves on half a dozen committees, has a full-time job as president of the Cambodian Business Assn. and seems to be perpetually in motion.

But, she says, these days “only my body is here; my mind is over there.”

“Over there” is her native Cambodia, where hundreds of thousands of her former countrymen and women are casting ballots this week in the first election in 20 years.

In the Long Beach Cambodian community, the largest outside of Cambodia, the election is on the minds of many. At least nine Long Beach-area residents have returned to Cambodia to run for office and several others returned to help the United Nations team overseeing the election. Blankenship is on the ballot under the Liberal Democratic Party, but she is not running an active campaign.

The voting, which ends today, is being watched with a mixture of hope, pride, apprehension and, for many, disappointment because it is nearly impossible for the thousands of Cambodians who live in Long Beach to participate.

To vote in the election, Cambodians in this country first had to travel to Cambodia to register by the end of January. That done, the only place in the United States where they could cast their ballot was in New York City. For many Long Beach residents, the cost was too much.

Sithea San was not eligible to vote because she missed the registration deadline, but said she did not have the money to fly to New York, anyway.

“I feel that we are left out, that we have been discriminated against. If the (United Nations and Cambodian leadership) really wanted us to vote they would have given us a polling place here. Everyone knows that we have the largest Cambodian community outside of Cambodia. . . . Come on, it’s just not fair.”

Long Beach’s Cambodian community blossomed in the mid-1970s, when the Communist Khmer Rouge seized power and began a despotic rule under which 1 million Cambodians died. Thousands fled the country and resettled in the Long Beach area. Thousands more came in 1980 and 1981 shortly after Vietnamese forces ousted the Khmer Rouge and sparked a civil war that raged until 1991, when a peace agreement was signed. Today, about 50,000 Cambodians live in Los Angeles County, most of them in Long Beach.

This week’s elections, which were agreed upon in the peace accord, have been hailed as a historic event that might end the country’s long history of bloodshed. Twenty parties are on the ballot, and nearly 5 million Cambodians registered to vote. By Wednesday, at least 4 million people had cast their ballots.

The 120 people who win seats in the new National Assembly will be charged with drafting a new constitution.

The U.N. decision to establish the only U.S. polling place in New York came in the face of angry opposition from Cambodian-Americans in Long Beach. Hundreds of signatures were gathered. Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) and Assemblywoman Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach) both joined the effort, writing letters to Secretary of State Warren Christopher and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, urging them to establish a polling place in Long Beach. A Long Beach-based group called the Cambodian League for Common Concern mailed about 50,000 postcards to the United Nations, said Siphan Phay, a member of the group.

“We didn’t even receive one response,” Phay said, still upset. “Not a courtesy letter, not even a sentence of explanation, even though we told them we would do anything we could to help.”

Ambassador Albright wrote Rep. Horn a letter saying that both she and the secretary of state agreed that a polling place on the West Coast was a good idea, even if it cost more, but the United Nations refused to budge. Horn’s press secretary, Alexandra Pratt, said that the only explanation Horn received was that U.N. officials did not know how many Cambodian-Americans from this area were registered to vote, and so they decided not to set up a polling place here because “they didn’t know if it would be worth the cost.”

Phay said that only 11 people had voted in New York as of Tuesday. U.N. officials could not be reached for comment.

Vora Huy Kanthoul, the executive director of United Cambodian Community Inc., a Long Beach-based social service agency, said that even though most of the local community has been here for more than a decade, many still think of themselves as Cambodians, not Americans. He estimated that at least 70% of the Cambodian community here, including children born in the United States, speak the Cambodian language, and many people still have family in Cambodia.

“You become Americanized, yes,” said Kanthoul, who registered to vote while on a business trip to Cambodia, but said he could not afford to travel to New York to cast his ballot. “But you always look back at Cambodia as home.”

As it is now, the only thing the local community can do now is discuss the election, and by most accounts, they are doing plenty of that.

“At every corner, every coffee shop, restaurant, barber shop, everywhere Cambodian people meet, they are talking about the elections,” said Him S. Chhim, the executive director of the Long Beach-based Cambodian Assn. of America.

The discussions have often turned to heated political debate and raised pointed questions. Will the Vietnamese seize tighter control of the country if the ruling government, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen and backed by the Vietnamese, wins? Will the Khmer Rouge, which first agreed to and has now condemned the elections, abide by the results or will civil war continue? Are the elections truly “fair and free” as the United Nations promised, given the reports of violence and intimidation by both the ruling party and the Khmer Rouge? Can Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the last royal ruler of Cambodia, regain control of the country through his party, and if he does, is that good? Will the elections truly bring democracy to Cambodia?

While political philosophies differ, most people are praying for the same thing: that once this is all over, peace will finally come to their homeland.

BACKGROUND

Congress cleared the way in 1991 for the shutdown of 34 domestic military installations, including the Long Beach Naval Station. The action was part of a major reshaping of the U.S. military prompted by the end of the Cold War and cuts in spending. The 34 bases are scheduled to close by 1997. As a result, thousands of acres of federal property have been declared surplus and are being offered to other agencies.