The results of the 1998 Cambodian elections confounded both international observers and opposition candidates. In a polling day environment called “free and fair” by assorted international observers, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) won most seats. This party had seized power from its coalition partner the previous year by force, and had a twenty-year history of ruling in an oppressive manner, backed for a decade by the troops of Cambodia's historic enemies, the Vietnamese.

Under these circumstances, one might have expected the CPP to have been held democratically accountable for years of corruption, human rights violations, forced conscription and silencing of dissent, and ousted decisively by an impoverished and war-weary electorate. Vigorous election campaigns fought by two major opposition parties, under the leadership of a member of the much-loved royal family, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and a charismatic former Finance Minister, Sam Rainsy, called for this outcome.

Rainsy told voters shortly before polling day:

Yet the CPP received 41.4 per cent share of the vote (compared to 31.7 per cent for Ranariddh's FUNCINPEC Party, or the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Co-operative Cambodia, and 14.3 per cent for the Sam Rainsy Party), and a simple majority of parliamentary seats (64 seats compared to FUNCINPEC's 43 and the Sam Rainsy Party's 15).

Seeking to explain this phenomenon, the opposition denounced the electoral process as flawed, citing counting irregularities and voter intimidation.