Keng Vannsak also met Saloth Sar on several occasions in 1954-1955. He was impressed by his former protégé’s “measured and intelligent” manner, his seriousness, and his political acuity—characteristics he had not noticed in Paris. The two worked together to radicalize Democratic policy and to educate the electorate. This meant uniting the various strands of opposition to the French—those willing to cooperate with the Vietnamese and those who distrusted them; those ready to continue armed struggle and those unwilling to do so; those who wanted to reform the Cambodian government and those who wanted to overturn it. They were joined in these efforts by Khieu Ponnary, who, upon her return from Paris in 1951, had taken a post teaching Cambodian literature at a college in Takeo.12

The 1955 campaign was the first time that a wide range of political options was available to Cambodia’s voters. The occasion did not present itself again until the UN-sponsored elections of 1993. On the left were the concealed Indochina Communist party; its front group, the Pracheachon; and the radical Democrats, led by Thiounn Mumm and Keng Vannsak. In the center were the Thanhist Democrats and other members of that party frightened by radical inroads. Toward the right were those affiliated with the Liberal party and with antidemocratic groupings formed in the early 1950s. The best-organized group was the Democrats, although in some rural areas, particularly in the east and southwest, the Pracheachon, inheriting the popularity of the armed resistance, swiftly struck deep roots.

Most observers believed that the stage was set for another Democratic victory at the polls. The prospect exhilarated Vannsak and his friends, but it distressed members of Cambodia’s more conservative elite, who by this time were hitching their political fortunes to the king. These men had no coherent ideology; they were counting on Sihanouk’s charisma, his animosity toward the Democrats, and their own support of the king to bring them into power. They came from parties never represented in the National Assembly, and they all resented the Democrats’ “monopoly” of power. In December 1954 they joined forces to form a “nonpolitical” grouping that pledged its loyalty to the king. Prominent members of this group included Nhek Tioulong, Sam Sary, Lon Nol, and Sisowath SirikMatak.13

All of the contenders in the elections were optimistic, but only Sihanouk had access to the coercive machinery of the state. This advantage was decisive when combined with his popularity in rural areas and his new political skills. In the end, Sihanouk killed any possibility of political pluralism, forced his opponents into clandestinity, and encouraged the survival of the Cambodian Communist movement, the only political grouping that was prepared to operate in the dark.