Craig Guthrie
The Mekong Times
Although the campaign for last Sunday’s national election was more peaceful and technically better organized than the nation’s previous elections, it still fell short of a number of key international standards, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) said yesterday.
“As someone who was here in 2003, I feel that the election environment has improved a great deal,” said Glyn Ford, the EU mission representative from the European Parliament. “Nevertheless, there were some issues that caused concern.”
The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which is widely believed to have routed the opposition in Sunday’s vote, exerts an unhealthy influence over the nation’s media and election administration said the mission at the launch of its preliminary statement on the campaign.
There is evidence of other dubious maneuvers by the CPP, such as a “consistent and widespread use of state resources [to campaign],” and defections from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) to the CPP which “would support the claim that funds or high government positions were offered,” said Martin Callanan, the EU EOM’s chief observer.
He said that the EU mission has witness statements which suggest that a pattern of defections of the SRP’s leadership and key activists to the CPP in return for funds, government positions or gifts may be part of “an organized campaign.”
The CPP dominated media coverage of the elections was not consistent with international standards on free and equal access to the media, said the mission.
The National Election Committee (NEC) proved its ability to organize technically good elections, but “all aspects of the election’s administration were dominated by the CPP,” he said, adding that village and commune chiefs, the majority of whom are CPP affiliated, would often “influence” voters’ decisions.
Some 50,000 previous registered voters, or 0.6 percent of the electorate, were mistakenly deleted from the voter list, and despite the NEC’s awareness of the fact it refused to restore their names and thus disenfranchised them, said the EU in its report.
The NEC also delegated tasks to local authorities which were known not to be impartial, said Callanan.
The EU monitors found evidence that the 1018 voter ID forms were being illegally distributed by CPP-aligned village chiefs to voters, despite the fact that their ID cards showed they had different identities, effectively allowing voters to either vote twice or ineligible voters to take part.
“This is a clear contravention of Cambodia’s Election Law,” Callanan said, adding that there is no way to know how widespread the practice was as there are no records of how many 1018 forms were issued.
The mission chief said that the “Cambodian People are to be congratulated for the peaceful and orderly way in which they turned out to vote … in a clear demonstration of their commitment to democracy.”
He added that it was the decision of the Cambodian people whether to accept or reject the results, and that the size of the CPP majority in comparison to the scale of the irregularities could render them ineffectual.
“The CPP clearly has a very large majority therefore any irregularities would have to be on a very large scale to invalidate the [election] result.”
Sam Rainsy, whose SRP has jointly rejected the election results with other major opposition parties, said at the report’s launch that he was satisfied with the EU’s findings and that there has been not yet been any concrete acceptance of the elections as “free and fair” by the international community.
“In a proportional representation system like ours a single vote can cost a seat, so though 50,000 voters in a voting population of 8 million may not sound a lot, it is actually very significant,” he said, adding that he hoped to deliver more evidence of irregularities to the EU monitors.
Callanan said that the request by the SRP and other opposition parties that the election be re-held will only be credible if they can produce sufficient evidence of large-scale irregularities, adding that the EU’s full report on the entire electoral process will be released in October.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia (OHCHR) also released a statement yesterday commending the election’s atmosphere for being “for the most part peaceful and free of violence.”
However, the OHCHR did observe “an apparent campaign of pressure, threats, intimidation and inducements directed against political activists at every level in an attempt to persuade them to change parties.”
“As someone who was here in 2003, I feel that the election environment has improved a great deal,” said Glyn Ford, the EU mission representative from the European Parliament. “Nevertheless, there were some issues that caused concern.”
The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which is widely believed to have routed the opposition in Sunday’s vote, exerts an unhealthy influence over the nation’s media and election administration said the mission at the launch of its preliminary statement on the campaign.
There is evidence of other dubious maneuvers by the CPP, such as a “consistent and widespread use of state resources [to campaign],” and defections from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) to the CPP which “would support the claim that funds or high government positions were offered,” said Martin Callanan, the EU EOM’s chief observer.
He said that the EU mission has witness statements which suggest that a pattern of defections of the SRP’s leadership and key activists to the CPP in return for funds, government positions or gifts may be part of “an organized campaign.”
The CPP dominated media coverage of the elections was not consistent with international standards on free and equal access to the media, said the mission.
The National Election Committee (NEC) proved its ability to organize technically good elections, but “all aspects of the election’s administration were dominated by the CPP,” he said, adding that village and commune chiefs, the majority of whom are CPP affiliated, would often “influence” voters’ decisions.
Some 50,000 previous registered voters, or 0.6 percent of the electorate, were mistakenly deleted from the voter list, and despite the NEC’s awareness of the fact it refused to restore their names and thus disenfranchised them, said the EU in its report.
The NEC also delegated tasks to local authorities which were known not to be impartial, said Callanan.
The EU monitors found evidence that the 1018 voter ID forms were being illegally distributed by CPP-aligned village chiefs to voters, despite the fact that their ID cards showed they had different identities, effectively allowing voters to either vote twice or ineligible voters to take part.
“This is a clear contravention of Cambodia’s Election Law,” Callanan said, adding that there is no way to know how widespread the practice was as there are no records of how many 1018 forms were issued.
The mission chief said that the “Cambodian People are to be congratulated for the peaceful and orderly way in which they turned out to vote … in a clear demonstration of their commitment to democracy.”
He added that it was the decision of the Cambodian people whether to accept or reject the results, and that the size of the CPP majority in comparison to the scale of the irregularities could render them ineffectual.
“The CPP clearly has a very large majority therefore any irregularities would have to be on a very large scale to invalidate the [election] result.”
Sam Rainsy, whose SRP has jointly rejected the election results with other major opposition parties, said at the report’s launch that he was satisfied with the EU’s findings and that there has been not yet been any concrete acceptance of the elections as “free and fair” by the international community.
“In a proportional representation system like ours a single vote can cost a seat, so though 50,000 voters in a voting population of 8 million may not sound a lot, it is actually very significant,” he said, adding that he hoped to deliver more evidence of irregularities to the EU monitors.
Callanan said that the request by the SRP and other opposition parties that the election be re-held will only be credible if they can produce sufficient evidence of large-scale irregularities, adding that the EU’s full report on the entire electoral process will be released in October.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia (OHCHR) also released a statement yesterday commending the election’s atmosphere for being “for the most part peaceful and free of violence.”
However, the OHCHR did observe “an apparent campaign of pressure, threats, intimidation and inducements directed against political activists at every level in an attempt to persuade them to change parties.”
3 comments:
I'd truly recommend the opposition leaders to gather together and call on the people for a massive demonstration to protest against the electoral fraud and other irregularities during the election by using PEOPLE POWER.
You must take time to choreograph and orchestrate the upcoming demonstration; yes, it has to be massive, or don't bother.
Also, people overseas need to protest in front of the (preferably) the U.S. embassy and the UN.
Again, the demonstration must be massive and ubiquitous and simultaneously to show a strong opposition against the ectoral fraud. And the international community must know and recognize that the election was flawed.
What a sore losers?
I've already the CPP through NEC had rigged and have pre-determined the result from before the election is started.
There millions of SRP supporters as seen in the Campaign but not the case.
All supporter of SRP and other opposition parties must comeout all at the same time to make protest again this election fraud the CPP is cooking.
No wonder why Hun Sen quote "he is so confident that he doesn't need to Campaign in any election". That's because the CPP/NEC has secretly cooking how best to prevent the opposition supporters (In millions 2008) from voting and how best to allow CPP supporter to vote once, twice & even three time by going around different villages and using 1018 to do this and using the ghost name, bvote buying and allow illegal vietnamese immgrant to vote in mass.
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