Internatio​nal Community Must Burn Bridges With Illegitima​te Government And Help Ensure Democratic Elections

March 24, 2013

CAMBODIA

International Community Must Burn Bridges With Illegitimate Government And Help Ensure Democratic Elections

Revelations this week from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) on the state of electoral lists in Cambodia show that the country is run by an illegitimate government which has maintained power over the decades through falsified elections.

The conclusions of the enquiry driven by the US non-government organization dedicated to promoting democracy globally, indicate conclusively that recent elections in Cambodia rest on electoral lists that have been manipulated and falsified to an extent that destroys the concept of universal suffrage. The will of the people has been at best obscured and at worst denied at successive elections.

The moment has now come to acknowledge that the current government in Phnom Penh, controlled by the same party (Cambodian People’s Party) for 34 years and by the same prime minister (Hun Sen) for 28 years, has no legitimacy.

According to the discredited National Election Committee (NEC), the ruling CPP won 63% of the votes at the last communal elections on June 1, 2012, versus 31% for the united opposition made up of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Human Rights Party (HRP).

If the electoral lists hadn't been falsified, but established in an honest and transparent manner to allow the popular will to be expressed via universal suffrage, the results would have been significantly different.

At a cautious, minimum estimate, the irregularities found by the NDI imply the following distortions:

1- An increase in the number of votes attributed to the CPP of 10% through the use of fictional or phantom voters. These voters who only exist on paper are an automatic reservoir of support for the ruling party. The NDI found that “10.4% of names on the (official) voter list were unknown.” In these calculations, I assume that almost all these fraudulent votes accrued to the CPP.

2- An increase in the number of votes attributed to the CPP of a further 10% from the 25.8% of names who are on the electoral register which belong to people who, in all likelihood, won’t vote at the assigned place. The names of the absent people are often used to create votes for the CPP by passing off one person as another, meaning impersonation through fraudulent voter identification documents. I am cautious and take only 10%, which is less than half of the figure given by the NDI, as representing CPP fraudulent support. According to the NDI, “17.9% of names on the list exist but live most of the time in another location; 7.4% have permanently relocated, and 0.5% were confirmed as dead.”

3- A reduction in the number of votes cast for the opposition by at least 10% out of the 17.1% of citizens who were eligible but not registered or de-registered. Here I take a little more than half the NDI figure as representing lost opposition votes. Non-inclusion on the electoral register is, in the first place, the result of political and administrative discrimination at first enrolment, when citizens known to be opposition supporters meet insurmountable administrative problems with a village or commune chief who favors the CPP (98% of cases). Even once enrolled on the register, electors can suddenly lose their right to vote through the selective suppression of names by the NEC, which affects only the opposition. Some of the removals are even more surprising as they concern citizens who voted in the elections of 2008 and/or 2012. This is effectively disenfranchisement and shows that the NEC is carrying out political cleansing for the CPP. According to the NDI, "10.8% of eligible citizens who think they are registered were not found on the voter registry. Further, 7.8% of eligible citizens are currently unregistered even though they said they voted in the 2008 and/or 2012 elections."

4- The prevention of a potential increase of opposition votes of at least 10% by creating all sorts of difficulties for voters on election day. This is done through organised confusion along with political and administrative discrimination against opposition supporters, notably in the issuing of identity documents and in tolerance of inaccurate information. According to the NDI, "Voter data (in 2012/2013) is less accurate than in 2008. Only 63% of records show matching data for date of birth, compared to 78.9% in 2008; and 86.4% of names match, compared to 87.8% in 2008." Discriminatory measures aim to obscure the existence of those citizens who are, or are suspected of being, supporters of the opposition in order to prevent them from voting. The complex administrative procedures put in place by the NEC have contributed to a continuous decline in voter turnout from over 90% in 1993 (elections organised by the United Nations) to 60% (including ghost and other fake or fraudulent voters) in 2012. Lower turnout automatically penalizes the opposition. The CPP uses the resources of state to get its supporters to the polls and make sure they are in the right place to vote. Opposition supporters face all manner of administrative obstacles.

In consequence, by partly correcting the impact of some of the above-exposed election irregularities, the result of a democratic, transparent and honest election would have been as follows:

• Ruling CPP: 63% - 10% - 10% = 43%
• Opposition SRP + HRP: 31% + 10% + 10% = 51%

The scope of changes made to the figures corresponds to the scale of the irregularities and anomalies found by the NDI in the electoral register, which are sufficient to completely overturn the expression of the popular will.

The NDI said that there is "a dire need for fundamental change in the voter registration and list compilation process in Cambodia to ensure the right to vote for all eligible citizens and to prevent ghost voters and potential for manipulation and fraud." Rather than the NEC, which is controlled by members of the ruling CPP, an independent and professional body should carry out voter registration, the NDI said.

New electoral lists are clearly needed if Cambodia’s vote is to be meaningful. The experience of Bangladesh has shown that this can be done. With cross-party political will and the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a new high-quality electoral register for over 80 million Bangladeshi voters was created in a matter of eight months in 2008.

To allow the Cambodian people to express itself and to let the country elect a legitimate government, the international community must increase the pressure on the authorities in Phnom Penh to accept the recommendations of the United Nations issued in 2012 for the organisation of this year’s elections. These UN recommendations are underscored by the NDI which details the steps to be taken to produce an electoral register of sufficient quality to allow elections worthy of the name.

Please help bring about democracy in Cambodia through free and fair elections so as to render justice to the Cambodian people whose will has been distorted for so long.

Sam Rainsy

Cambodia’s opposition leader