Election observers must observe ongoing election tricks before Voting Day

June 1, 2012

ELECTION OBSERVERS MUST OBSERVE ONGOING ELECTION TRICKS BEFORE VOTING DAY

In my May 30 statement titled "Preventing the CPP from distorting the people's will", I elaborated on the two main tricks used by the ruling party to manipulate elections including the June 1 commune elections: Disenfranchisement and Impersonation (see text below).

Based on past experience and recommendations from opposition grassroots activists throughout the country, I have suggested practical measures to counter the impersonation voter fraud scheme that is being implemented by the CPP with the complicity of the biased National Election Committee (NEC).

Because the NEC refuses to examine any transparency-based measure as the ones I legitimately suggested, the situation is getting out of control with regards to the issuing by CPP local authorities of controversial voter identification documents whose official name is "Identification Document" or "Statement of Identity", which is the new version of "Form 1018" decried in 2008 by the Election Observation Mission from the European Union..

The corresponding impersonation voter fraud scheme allows the CPP to secure a landslide election victory before Election Day in those communes where "Statements of Identity" are being fraudulently issued to illegitimate voters on an unprecedented scale.

On Election Day, there is no need for any election observer to observe anything in any polling station in any commune where the CPP has been implementing its impersonation voter fraud scheme many days before Election Day: There is no point in observing a forgone conclusion unfold.

Excerpt from an authoritative election report published in 2008 by a group of researchers from Princeton University (USA): "The CPP uses a variety of tactics to illegitimately define who can and cannot participate in the electoral process. This reflects the CPP's shift in focus from manipulation on Election Day to manipulation in the months leading up to Election Day. By enfranchising illegitimate but loyal CPP supporters and disenfranchising opposition supporters, the CPP can influence electoral outcomes in advance.

http://tinyurl.com/79ueagx

Sam Rainsy

Elected Member of Parliament

Leader of the Opposition

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May 30, 2012

PREVENTING THE CPP FROM DISTORTING THE PEOPLE'S WILL AT NEXT SUNDAY'S

COMMUNE ELECTIONS

As a general pattern the ruling CPP has two combined ways to manipulate elections so as to secure a landslide victory before Voting Day: Disenfranchisement and Impersonation.

I- SYSTEMATIC DISENFRANCHISEMENT TO REDUCE VOTES FOR THE OPPOSITION There is a massive disenfranchisement affecting citizens that CPP-affiliated village chiefs and other local officials throughout the country have identified as non-CPP supporters or potential opposition voters. Based on political reports from CPP grassroots agents, the CPP-controlled National Election Committee (NEC) establishes voter lists in such a way as to exclude as many opposition voters as possible. According to independent observers from COMFREL (Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia), up to 1.5 million Cambodians representing 17 percent of the electorate will lose their right to vote in the upcoming commune elections due to irregularities in voters' registration lists (*).

II- SYSTEMATIC IMPERSONATION TO INFLATE VOTES FOR THE RULING PARTY At the same time that countless real citizens and legitimate voters are excluded from voters' registration lists (see Point I related to disenfranchisement), the NEC slyly keeps countless ghost voters' names in voter lists in order to allow illegitimate voters paid or manipulated by the CPP to cast votes through impersonation with the use of controversial voter identification documents fraudulently issued by CPP local officials who control the country. According to independent observers, ghost voters represent up to 10 percent of registered voters in many polling stations. The controversial voter identification documents are a new version of "Form 1018" now called "Identification Document" with similar characteristics as "Form 1018" that easily allow fraud (**). Moreover, with more and more CPP-affiliated state employees being encouraged to register as voters more than once at different places (see evidence presented by the opposition SRP at their May 29 press conference) and also with the increasing number of migrant workers who will not be able to vote at the place where they were originally registered as voters, the CPP will be in a position to make use of a larger number of ghost voters' names for impersonation through illegally issued voter "Identification Documents", thus allowing them to bring a larger number of illegitimate voters into polling stations on Voting Day. Those illegitimate voters will be fraudulently given the names and voting rights of ghost voters to inflate votes for the CPP.

Opposition Offers Money for Proof of Rigging

Mu Sochua, deputy secretary- general of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, calls out to supporters in Phnom Penh Wednesday.

By Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
30 July 2008

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy offered money to voters who could help him prove Sunday's elections were rigged, as he led a rally at his party headquarters in the capital Wednesday.

More than 300 people gathered at the headquarters, under the watch of a large number of armed intervention, military and traffic police, who also positioned a water-cannon on Sotheros Boulevard outside the headquarters.

The Sam Rainsy Party won 26 seats in Sunday's election, according to National Election Committee preliminary figures, but he has contested the results.

Sam Rainsy said at the rally he was attempting to collect from voters proof they had used an illegal administrative form, No. 1018, for voting. He offered $50 to anyone who could prove they voted with the form, even though their names were not on the voter registry.

Opposition votes were taken by NEC "bandits," who conspired to ensure a Cambodian People's Party victory, Sam Rainsy said.

NEC Secretary-General Tep Nitha said the national election body had issued form No. 1018 a day before the election to people who were on voter registries but did not have photo identification, which is legal under election regulations.

Suth Dyna, deputy secretary-general of the Norodom Ranariddh Party, said Wednesday his party supported the Sam Rainsy Party's call for form 1018. His party was also preparing documentation to complain over election results, he said.

Polls Were Fair - EU Observers

By Andrew Nette

PHNOM PENH, Jul 30 (IPS) - An attempt by Cambodia’s four main opposition parties to reject the result of national elections, in which the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was returned in a landslide, has met with little support from local and international organisations monitoring the poll.

In a short statement released earlier this week, the four political parties called "on the public opinion and the international community not to recognise the results of the July 27, 2008 elections which were manipulated and rigged by the ruling CPP.''

Opposition parties argue the extent of CPP’s win reflects a campaign of intimidation, vote buying and dirty tricks orchestrated by the ruling party in the lead-up to the election.

They maintain CPP’s vote was further inflated on polling day by the deletion of many legitimate names from the voting list and the issuing of fraudulent ‘1018’ forms by local authorities controlled by CPP.

These forms are official documentation that voters lacking proper identification can submit to be able to vote. It is illegal under Cambodian election law for them to be handed out on polling day.

However, opposition calls of foul play have received little support from local and international election monitors, including a 130-member European Union election observation mission, in Cambodia since mid-June.

"I would say that on the basis of the provisional results published so far, CPP very clearly has a large majority and therefore any irregularities would have to be of a very large scale to invalidate the result," Martin Callanan, chief observer for the EU mission told the media in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.

"While it is fair to say we have some evidence of irregularities these are not of such significant scale," he said.

Although an official seat count has yet to be released, Cambodia’s main poll monitor, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections (COMFREL), has estimated CPP won approximately 57 percent in the weekend’s vote, giving it roughly 90 seats in the 123-member National Assembly.

This is broadly in sync with CPP’s own projections released to the media earlier this week.

In is also in line with the expectations of local and international commentators who were predicting the ruling party would win big in last Sunday’s election.

According to COMFREL, the next largest party, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), secured 21 percent of the vote. The Norodom Ranarridh Party, Funcinpec and the Human Rights Party hovered under five percent each.

While describing the general atmosphere in the lead-up to the poll as an improvement on previous national elections, Callanan stressed it still "fell short of a number of key international standards for democratic elections.’’

Despite improvements in transparency, he said the EU mission noted a lack of confidence in the impartiality of election administration among stakeholders, and that all aspects of the election process are dominated by the ruling CPP.

Within hours of the close of polls on Sunday, opposition parties had raised what they believed where serious concerns about the validity of the process.

Approximately 200 disgruntled voters who found themselves struck off the voter list had gathered throughout the day in the compound of the SRP headquarters in Phnom Penh.

A SRP spokesperson said these irregularities including large numbers of people being deleted from the voter list and forged 1018 forms issued to pro-ruling party voters not on the voter roll, many of whom she said were "foreigners, not Cambodian nationals.’’

Speaking to IPS on election night, SRP’s leader Sam Rainsy claimed that the names of at least 200,000 eligible voters had been deleted from the rolls in Phnom Penh alone.

SRP has since handed out fliers on the streets of the capital claiming nearly a million people across the country were disenfranchised in Sunday’s vote although no hard evidence has been proffered to support this claim.

"I am aware of the comments of the opposition parties rejecting the results but I would encourage the parties to first use the complaint process established by NEC," Callanan said Tuesday.

Officials at the National Election Committee (NEC), the body responsible for overseeing the country’s elections, have said the deadline for complaints about the voter list had long passed and no action would be taken on the matter.

It is unclear what tactics the four opposition parties will now adopt to push their cause, although SRP has called a rally in Phnom Penh Wednesday to protest the result.

"The number of names removed on the weekend was no surprise to us because this is what we found in our audit," said Puthea Hang, Executive Director of Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (NICFEC).

NICFEC is one of several organisations involved in a June 2008 audit of the voter list, which found approximately 590,000 names had been incorrectly removed from list or 0.7 percent of the total electoral roll.

"Every vote is important," said Tom Andrews, a senior advisor to the National Democratic Institute, which worked with NICFEC on the audit and on training observers placed in 378 of the country’s 1,245 polling stations.

"But we need to base our conclusion on the evidence we have seen in the audit and our observers did not show what has been suggested by the opposition,’’ Andrews said. "It showed that people had been taken from the list but that the number was small and there was no clear pattern."

NGOs maintain they alerted NEC months ago about these mistaken deletions but the election body refused to restore the names.

"It is regretful that NEC did not take the opportunity to reinstate those names when they had the chance," said Callanan.

While Callanan agreed the issuing of 1018 forms on polling day was "in clear contravention of the election law," EU observers had only "found a relatively small number of examples" of these being issued.

Most groups monitoring the poll agree the elections were an improvement on the last poll in 2003.

All groups welcomed the decrease in violence compared to previous polls.

There is also general agreement that the technical aspects of the country’s electoral process, including the ballot and counting, are steadily improving.

"NEC proved its ability to organise technically good elections with the planning and execution of the recruitment and training of election staff and other important electoral activities being timely and well conducted," the EU mission said in its preliminary statement released Tuesday.

These improvements aside, monitoring groups say a long list of problems stand in the way of genuinely fair elections.

Many of these have less to do with what happens on polling day or even in the official four-week campaign, than they are the result of decades of instability and the dominant role played by CPP in the country’s political life since 1979, when neighbouring Vietnamese installed them after overthrowing the Khmer Rouge.

CPP almost completely dominates the electronic media, particularly TV, by far the most important source of information for Cambodians.

The EU statement said this situation is "to the detriment of the other parties to a degree which was not consistent with international standards of free and fair access to the media," the EU statement said.

On Jul. 10, NEC issued a warning to 13 television stations for broadcasting biased coverage of the elections. Ten of these were dominated by pro-CPP coverage, according to NEC.

"Not only do people have a right to vote but they have a right to an informed choice," said Andrews. "CPP domination of the media makes this very difficult."

The 2003 campaign also saw a widespread increase in the use of state resources by CPP during the campaign period, including the use of government vehicles and campaigning by government and military staff.

Other problems included widespread vote buying and the interference of village chiefs, the overwhelming majority of which are pro-CPP, in NEC’s voter education activities.

"I say take it as a whole, before the election and after balloting," said Andrews. "I think this (election) was a step forward on the longer road to a more vibrant and healthy democracy. But there are several steps more that need to be taken."