Senate election campaign does not gather much steam

The SRP held its election campaign at its headquarters with opposition leader Sam Rainsy joining in through video conference (Photo: Siv Channa, RFI)

08 Jan 2012
By Pen Bona
Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by Soch

The campaign for the 3rd mandate senate election is under way but it does not attract much attention. The campaign which started on Saturday, will last until 27 Jan and only two parties are competing: the SRP and the CPP. The CPP led the campaign with great fanfare, but the SRP led a quiet campaign with meetings held at its party headquarters only.

This is the second day for the 3rd mandate senate election that will take place at the end of January. The CPP led its campaign with great fanfare yesterday, a campaign that coincides with 07 January – a day the CPP observes as the 33rd anniversary of the victory over the KR regime. However, the SRP – the CPP’s only competitor – did not put much emphasis on this campaign. Instead, the SRP organized its campaign by holding meetings at its party headquarters with opposition leader Sam Rainsy attending these meetings through video conference. This type of meetings started since Sunday of this week.

Only 2 parties are in the race for the senate election: the SRP and the CPP. Funcinpec and NRP, which only have small number of MPs and commune councilors, are not participating in this election as their numbers will not allow them to obtain even a single seat. Nevertheless, Funcinpec and NRP MPs and commune councilors are expected to vote for the ruling CPP, a party they both ally with.

The senate election will take place on 29 January. Those who can vote are MPs and commune councilors only, therefore the outcome of the election is already known in advance: the SRP expects to obtain 11 seats and the CPP 46. This number is computed based on the number of voters in each party. In addition, 4 senators will be nominated by the NatAss (2) and by the king (2). The total number of senators is 61.

Nevertheless, this number could change if some voters do not vote for their party and vote for another alternative party instead. Recently, the SRP required that its voters swear that they will vote for the party only. Because it is a non-universal election, the election campaign does not attract much attention at all.