Ballots and Bullets

Politics in Cambodia can be a lethal business. In recent months, unknown assailants have murdered nearly a dozen people in what appear to be political vendettas. Last week, popular singer Touch Srey Nich, 24, was leaving a flower shop in Phnom Penh when four gunmen on motorbikestwo in military uniformopened fire, killing Touch's 62-year-old mother and leaving the singer with multiple gunshot wounds to the face. (She is now in critical condition in a Bangkok hospital.) Touch is known by many as the "voice of Funcinpec"the royalist opposition partyand her rendition of Funcinpec's anthem receives constant play on the party's radio...