In Khmer news outlets, a different election tale

Tue, 30 July 2013

Mom Kunthear  

The Phnom Penh Post

Sunday's strong showing by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party and the dramatic shrinking of the ruling party’s once-dominant lead in National Assembly seats made for easy headlines for foreign news outlets covering Sunday’s election.

For local media, however, outlets often affiliated to one degree or another with the government, framing the poll’s surprising results proved somewhat trickier.

A glowing feature on the Deum Ampil News website yesterday touted the Cambodian People’s Party’s overall election victory and the continuation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s now 28-year rule.

It dedicated just a sentence or two to the 26 new seats claimed by the CNRP.

Koh Santepheap, meanwhile, focused on individual provincial results, limiting the broad strokes to the fact the CPP had, in fact, won enough seats to set up a new government.

The Cambodia Express News website published a slew of election results provided by the National Election Committee, each focusing on positives for the ruling party.

The CPP’s loss of one seat in Siem Reap, for instance, was quickly followed by an explanation that the CPP had won the province by four seats to the CNRP’s two.

An employee working for the CEN website who declined to be named yesterday told the Post there was a simple explanation for that – they were ordered to report more heavily on the CPP than the opposition.

“We cannot do whatever we want, because the higher-up website managers order the lower staff to report and post more stories about the CPP,” he said.

“Most of the local media are managed by the ruling party and we follow orders from our superiors.”

Many state and private television stations limited their coverage to broadcasting the CPP’s declaration of victory yesterday in which they asked people to remain calm and not incite violence.

The one Khmer television outlet offering full results, TVK, offered them via a marathon broadcast in which hosts recited a commune-by-commune breakdown.

With the vast majority of media dominated by the government or those with ties to them, it is unsurprising to see such a skew, said journalism trainer Chhay Sohpal, who is also the editor-in-chief of Cambodia News.

Many local reporters, he said, are simply doing what they are told.

“The main problem is that some media organisation owners are close to government officials and must report in favour of the ruling party,” Sophal said.

Journalists who fail to do so risk losing their jobs, while their outlets risk losing their licences, he said.

A report published earlier this year by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media pointed to self-censorship as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a more independent press.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MELISSA MCMORRAN

 

For foreign observers, a crash course then go

Tue, 30 July 2013

Amelia Woodside

The Phnom Penh Post

 

As wrangling over Sunday’s election results continues apace, the opposition has sought to highlight the findings of independent observers who manned the polling stations on Election Day, diligently recording and reporting back a raft of irregularities.

Observers from all parties were stationed at the polls, but it was the independent watchdog results that have had the most sway. Mixed in among the thousands of Cambodian workers, meanwhile, were a handful of foreign volunteers who – armed with a single three-hour crash course – set out to observe an election that monitors warned would be the least fair yet.

Last week, 16 individuals from a broad spectrum of backgrounds ranging from US ex-military to legal interns, took a course on Cambodian politics before dispersing to polling booths in Phnom Penh on Sunday as Nicfec monitors.

Two three-hour-long trainings were given on July 24 and July 27 by anti-gender discrimination NGO CEDAW and local rights group Licadho.

Volunteers were instructed to record factual and unbiased information on the voter registration process, use of appropriate identification and party activity around polling stations.

Critical incident forms used to report incidences of fraud or intimidation at each polling station visited were also distributed amongst volunteers. Further supplies included voting irregularity report forms and a picture booklet of annotated Khmer IDS.

Marcos Smith, 47, a veteran of impartial election observing, gleaned by working as an official observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in countries like Albania and the Ukraine, saw few blatant irregularities but did notice doors left open or exposed to the public during the ballot tallying process at two different polling stations.

Returning to Cambodia a year and a half ago with his wife, a Cambodian native, Smith was initially resistant to observing Sunday’s elections after Prime Minister Hun Sen’s highly contested win in 2003.

“I was afraid nothing would change until two weeks ago, when my wife showed me all of the conversations happening on Facebook and other social media sites.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen has sought to limit the role of neutral election monitors by making Cambodian law the benchmark for observers’ evaluations. Indeed, this election saw the fewest ever number of international observers – just 41 – after the government failed to extend invitations to a number of nations while others said the number of irregularities would keep them away.

Francisca Gilmore, 22, an American interning for the Asian International Justice Initiative, described the role of observer as exciting and intense. “It also became overwhelming with so many voters approaching us because they were stopped from voting – names were listed twice or weird discrepancies with their IDs,” Gilmore said.

After witnessing multiple instances of poll irregularities at three different polling stations, Gilmore’s assessment of the proceedings were far from glowing. “This election was neither free nor fair,” she said.