The Cambodian people win.

• Author: Kilker, Jery
• Position: How elections have led to a new spirit in the country

Retired UN staffer Jery Kilker, who served as the World Health Organization Information Officer at UN Headquarters in New York from 1985 to 1992, Headed the UNTAC Information Centre in Phnom Penh from April to July 1993. During the Cambodian elections, he worked as a polling station officer and ballot counting supervisor. Mr. Kilker observed: "Everyone who served in Cambodia during the recent peace-building exercise has a different story to tell. This is my perspective."

Some of the many things that struck me about Cambodia were the underlying in beauty of the country and the people, and how much had been accomplished by the Khmer civilization over the centuries.

I was terribly impressed by how well all the non-Cambodian organizations and individuals got along and worked for the well-being of the country It was like being in the stereotypical, "Wild West", where persons with all kinds of skills came from many different directions to a place where new rules were being made: entrepreneurs were introducing goods and services, humanitarians were helping develop social services, civil servants were assisting in the establishment of government services, and law officers imported from the outside were seeking to establish order.

The many thousands of well-meaning "experts" came to Cambodia to share ideas, materials, and resources to replace those that had been taken away or destroyed during the previous 20 years.

Among the newcomers were a number of "returnees", Cambodions who settled in countries far away and who had come back home to impart new skills to their compatriots. One family, for instance, originally from Phnom Penh but which had resettled in Los Angeles, opened a small and popular restaurant called, not surprisingly, "California." The wife is teaching her relatives how to prepare and serve a different and marketable cuisine and to operate a small business. A son, beginning medical school, intends returning to his homeland and helping deliver much-needed health services.

The most eager to help with the "revelopment" of the new Cambodia are the considerably larger number of Cambodians who experienced 20 years of extreme cruelty and deprivation in the country or who grew up in refugee camps just outside. The eagerness is there, perhaps out of a profound buoyancy for the future or in the realization that there is no reasonable alternative.

The balloting started on Sunday, 23 May 1993, at the beginning of the...