"Change or no change?" asked the announcer at the first national congress of the Candlelight Party.
"Change! Change! Change!" chanted some 7,000 activists and supporters of the party that represents the most potent challenge the long-ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, faces in the upcoming national election in July.
The call-and-response erupted from the crowd gathered in early February on the outskirts of Siem Reap, the Cambodian city best-known for the temple complex of Ankor Wat.
The attendees echoed the raucous rallies of the dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which garnered immense popularity and success in the 2013 national elections and the 2017 commune elections before it was dismantled by the country's courts, sending many of its leaders into exile.
SEE ALSO: VOA Khmer Service's special project on the 2018 elections.
While the party has borrowed the symbol of the movement started by exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy — a white candle with an orange flame — he is not officially involved due to his legal baggage, and few expect the party to come anywhere close to the 55 National Assembly seats secured by the opposition CNRP a decade ago.
Yet the Candlelight Party could secure its place as the main opposition with just a few seats in parliament, in which the CPP currently holds all 125 seats. Teav Vannol, its president and a former opposition senator, told the congress it is aiming higher, pointing to its success in the 2022 commune elections, when it won 22% of the vote shortly after forming.
"We hope to achieve victory. The Candlelight Party will gain support from voters in 25 provinces. We will win," Teav Vannol told VOA Khmer after the congress concluded.
Hun Sen and his ruling party have proven extremely sensitive to any potential threats as the prime minister of 40 years prepares to transfer power to his eldest son, making political success a double-edged sword for The Candlelight Party.
The more popular the party becomes, the more likely it is to be targeted under new laws that make it easier for the courts to outlaw parties tied to convicted criminals. In January, Candlelight Party Vice President Thach Setha, a longtime opposition figure and leader of the minority Khmer Krom community, was jailed over three-year-old allegations of writing fraudulent checks to a pawnshop.
This dynamic has left the party walking a tightrope between casting itself as a democratic alternative to the long-ruling CPP without making full-throated attacks on the party, and seeking to gain a foothold through elections that Sam Rainsy and others say will not be free or fair.
'Silent' support
While cradling her 18-month-old son on her lap, Sorn Phearum cheered as the party's leaders spoke in Siem Reap.
"I have 100% confidence," said the 37-year-old member of the party's women's movement in Pursat province. "People in my community hope to see more jobs, justice and truth, despite facing constant intimidation and discrimination because we support an [opposition] party."
Korng Det, a party official in Prey Veng province, said he is undeterred by the ruling party's increasing harassment. He says he is committed to helping his party win in July.
"I am not afraid, even of death. We've lost trust and confidence and hope in [the government]. We only have the Candlelight Party, which gives us hope to strive," Korng Det told VOA Khmer.
The harassment of Candlelight leaders and activists extends beyond Thach Setha, who was jailed in March and denied bail for allegedly signing a bad check in 2019. In February, Son Chhay, another of the party's five vice presidents, was found guilty of defamation for alleging fraud in the commune elections last year and ordered to pay roughly $1 million in compensation.
Yet the party has pressed ahead with its work, with leaders traveling abroad to raise money, meeting with grassroots activists and organizing a public event last month that called for justice for the victims of the 1997 grenade attacks on an opposition rally in Phnom Penh.
"We will participate in the elections, unless the situations are worsened by the election day where we can't voice any concerns or complaints," Son Chhay told VOA Khmer.
Ly Kimheang, a Candlelight commune council member of Ro'ang Comm in Kampong Cham province, said she has been working every weekend since the party congress to connect with other activists and prepare for elections.
"There are these silent voters who will come out and vote for us," she said. "If you ask them publicly, they won't say so. Why? Because they are afraid of intimidation by local authorities. They asked me not to show up at their house but said that they will vote [for the party]."
An opposition divided
The Candlelight Party isn't alone trying to be a viable — but not too threatening — opposition to Hun Sen's government.
Kem Sokha, a longtime opposition figure who was Sam Rainsy's deputy president in the 2013 election, was convicted of treason last month and sentenced to 27 years of house arrest in a case blasted by Western governments and rights groups.
Some of his allies within the now-defunct CNRP have started their own party, the Cambodia Reform Party, which has borrowed the rising sun logo from its predecessor party.
"We're watching everything carefully and strategically. Nothing is set in stone in our politics. We are not saying we won't participate in this July elections, nor are we saying we don't look for an opportunity to merge with other parties," said Pol Hom, its president.
The merger of several opposition parties in the final months before the election could build momentum and help counter the ruling party's aggressive tactics in consolidating power, said longtime political observer Ok Serei Sopheak, a former chairman of the board of directors for Transparency International Cambodia.
But there are few signs of unity within the fragmented opposition, which the ruling CPP knows, said Sebastian Strangio, author of "Hun Sen's Cambodia."
"We have to ask why Candlelight Party has been able to register and run in the upcoming election. I mean, this is not something that CPP had to do. It was a choice that the party made very likely with a strategic goal in mind," he said.
It has the benefit of showing Western countries "a more democratic, legitimate electoral process," he added. "But I think the primary reason is to offer the Cambodian public a sense of a bit more choice."
'No surprises'
As the National Election Committee prepares to begin registering political parties and their candidates later this month, Sam Rainsy is already mobilizing pressure against what he says will be a bogus outcome.
"Kem Sokha is convicted and detained and cut off from even meeting with his lawyers. The CNRP is banned. So, the 'election' is a fake exercise at present," Sam Rainsy said in an email to VOA Khmer.
Sophal Ear, senior associate dean and an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, said one certainty is that the CPP will make sure it wins.
"No surprises will be entertained and the only viable opposition party, the Candlelight Party, will be snuffed out just like its namesake," said the academic who moved to the U.S. from France as a Cambodian refugee at the age of 10.
Astrid Norén-Nilsson, a senior lecturer at the Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University in Sweden, isn't so sure.
"The main unknown at this point in time is whether the Candlelight Party will face party dissolution or will be able to compete in the elections," she wrote to VOA Khmer in an email. "Neither situation would raise eyebrows."
