Voting yesterday began in an election for the Cambodian Senate decried by critics as a farce, with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) set to dominate months after the country’s only viable opposition party was dissolved.
The vestiges of Cambodia’s democratic project crumbled late last year when Hun Sen oversaw a crackdown on the press, civil society and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was disbanded in a court ruling not long after party leader Kem Sokha was arrested on treason charges.
Although the Senate vote arouses little interest in Cambodia, because the upper house is seen as a rubber-stamp body and candidates are elected by other officials rather than the public, the result is a clear prelude to the national poll set for July.
“We expect to win overwhelmingly,” CPP spokesman Sok Eysan told reporters, brushing off allegations that the election is undemocratic.
“CPP is regretful that we lost a main challenger but we cannot help them because they violated the law,” he said, referring to the CNRP.
The majority of the 62-seat senate is elected by thousands of local commune councilors and members of the Cambodian National Assembly.
However, the opposition CNRP was to have no say, as its parliamentary and commune seats were redistributed to other parties following the dissolution in November.
The CPP holds more than 95 percent of the commune councilor positions, comfortably enough to sweep the vote.
A total of four groups, including the royalist Funcinpec Party, were contesting the poll. It was the first time that the Senate election was held without a main opposition party.
The six-year-term Senate was formed in 1999 and its first election was held in 2006.
Opposition politician Sam Rainsy, who helped cofound the CNRP, said in a statement from abroad that the senate election was a “farce” and urged the international community to condemn it.
Western democracies and rights groups have slammed Hun Sen’s effort to clear out rivals.
The EU and the US in July pulled support for the election, while Germany has suspended preferential visa treatment for private travel for Hun Sen and his family.
Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia, said that the main effect of the CPP’s recent clampdown “has been simply to remove the pretense [of a functional democracy] and entrench a new era of less apologetic one-party domination.”
In yesterday’s election, 58 seats were voted on, while Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and the National Assembly were to each put forward two candidates to complete the total 62.
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