As in 1993, electioneering rhetoric in new national elections in 1998 was couched in the lofty terms of democratization; however, the electoral process was again clouded by now familiar dynamics of rivalry and intimidation. In the end, as veteran Cambodia observer Pierre Lizée later suggested, the 1998 elections were “not so much a first step in an overdue process of democratization” as “a movement full circle to precisely the situation of autocracy which these elections were supposed to remedy.”