Cambodian Opposition Rejects Election Results

Cambodian Opposition Rejects Election

Cambodian Opposition Rejects Election Results

The New York Times / IHT | 29  July 2013

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia faces a volatile and possibly prolonged political standoff after leaders of the opposition said on Monday that they rejected the preliminary results of Sunday’s election and accused the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Hun Sen of large-scale cheating to achieve a relatively narrow victory. 

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Mak Remissa/European Pressphoto Agency

Sam Rainsy, the president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, said on Monday at a news conference that his party "cannot accept the result" of the election.

• Ruling Party Wins Narrowly in Cambodian Vote (July 29, 2013)

With a number of monitoring organizations describing widespread voting irregularities, Sam Rainsy, the leader of the newly energized opposition, said at a news conference that the party would seek help from foreign and Cambodian election experts to decide whether to call for a recount or new elections. 

“We will not accept the result — we cannot accept the result,” he said. “The party in power cannot ignore us anymore.” 

Mr. Sam Rainsy had initially announced a victory after the polls closed on Sunday but retracted his claim. 

Mr. Hun Sen’s party, the Cambodian People’s Party, issued a statement late Sunday saying that preliminary results “clearly showed” that it had “won a victory,” and that the party had sufficient numbers to establish a new government. 

But the results were the poorest showing for the governing party since 1998. The Cambodian People’s Party won 55 percent of the 123 seats in the National Assembly, according to the party’s Web site — a relatively narrow victory, and down from 73 percent of the seats in the last election, in 2008. Analysts said voter turnout was about 70 percent. 

Mr. Hun Sen, 60, has been in power for 28 years, and the election on Sunday was one of the most closely contested of his career. 

Kem Sokha, the vice president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, said an opposition victory was still possible. 

“We have a chance to win,” Mr. Kem Sokha said. “It’s never been this close in our history.” 

He appeared to issue a veiled threat to the government, saying he feared that “Cambodian people who don’t like the result will rise up and make chaos.” 

The governing party’s statement on Sunday included an “appeal to all Cambodians to keep calm, maintain stability, security and good social order.” The opposition made a similar appeal for calm on Sunday after two police trucks were destroyed by protesters. 

Phnom Penh was quiet on Monday, but some streets were shut by security forces, including the one leading to Mr. Hun Sen’s residence. The opposition won a majority of the votes in the capital, according to the preliminary results. 

The Cambodia National Rescue Party was founded last year through a merger of Mr. Sam Rainsy’s party — named for him — and another group, and it has given the opposition a unified voice. It also effectively means that Cambodia has a two-party system for the first time since multiparty democracy was restored in the 1990s. 

Mr. Sam Rainsy, who said the party had calculated that 1.2 million to 1.3 million would-be voters had been omitted from voter rolls, called for the creation of a special committee to deal with irregularities and to decide whether new balloting or recounting was necessary. He proposed that the committee include members of both parties, as well as independent election observers, both Cambodian and foreign, and that the committee finish its work before Aug. 31. 

“We acknowledge that there were irregularities,” said Thun Saray, the president of the board of directors of Comfrel, a Cambodian election monitoring organization. He said there were many reports of duplicates in the voter rolls that appeared to have allowed more than one vote per person. 

A survey by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, an American organization that promotes elections, found that at 60 percent of polling stations, citizens with adequate, valid documentation were turned away. And in a quarter of the polling stations, people were allowed to vote without a valid ID. 

“The overall picture is both disenfranchisement, illegal voting and sporadic chaos at the polls,” said Laura Thornton, the head of the institute’s Cambodia office. “There needs to be an independent investigation into these irregularities.” She described the opposition’s proposal for a committee to investigate the election results as "reasonable.” 

But analysts were also waiting for clearer signals from Mr. Hun Sen, who kept a low profile on Monday. 

To his supporters, Mr. Hun Sen is a benefactor who has brought stability to the country. With help from the Vietnamese in 1979, he helped drive out the Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal policies led to the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians. 

But after the withdrawal of the Vietnamese and after United Nations-backed elections in 1993, Mr. Hun Sen accumulated unrivaled power and authority. Partly through effective control of the Khmer-language news media and the co-opting of the police, the army and business elites, his party has won every election since 1998.