With just over two weeks to go before parliamentary elections, more than 150 complaints have been made over violations of the country’s campaign laws, about 60 percent of which have come from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), according to National Election Committee (NEC) officials.
At a press conference on Thursday in Phnom Penh where the NEC unveiled its final audit of the official voter lists, NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha said that of the complaints received, 22 could not be resolved at the commune level and were sent to provincial election committees, while only four complaints had made it directly to the NEC, two of which remained unresolved.
Hoeu Rong, executive director of the NEC’s operations department, said he was unsure which complaints remained unsettled, but said that most of the other complaints had been about the location of campaign rallies and the placement of party posters.
“The CNRP has filed 99 complaints while the CPP has filed 33. The rest come from other parties and local authorities,” said Mr. Rong, adding that local authorities have mainly filed complaints about parties putting their posters on electricity poles or other prohibited spaces.
On July 2, the Phnom Penh Election Committee (PPEC) told the CNRP that their use of electricity and streetlamp poles to post campaign signs was against election laws that prevented state property to be used for campaigning. Nonetheless, many of the CNRP’s signs remain on utility poles throughout the city.
Complaints by the CNRP that the CPP has been given unfair access to Wat Botum, one of the largest public spaces in the center of Phnom Penh, have elicited no response from the PPEC. City Hall has defended granting Wat Botum to the CPP by claiming that the ruling party was the first party to ask them to use the space.
Spokesman for the CNRP Yem Ponhearith said Thursday that the his party had also filed complaints over the CPP’s use of defectors from the CNRP to directly attack opposition leaders Kem Sokha and Sam Rainsy, ignoring requests from the NEC last month asking parties to refrain from personal attacks during the campaign period.
In the weeks leading up to the July 28 ballot, the CPP has had National Police Major General Kem Sokhon, the brother of Mr. Sokha and a former opposition politician himself, appear at campaign rallies and on CPP-friendly television and radio stations attacking the credibility of his brother and Mr. Rainsy.
CPP lawmaker and National Assembly spokesman Chheang Vun declined to comment on what complaints have been filed by the ruling party.
Mr. Rong said the number of complaints filed this year was on par with 2008.
Mr. Nytha also said at Thursday’s conference that more than 20,000 local election observers would be joined by 41 international observers to monitor polling stations on election day. The European Union, which in 2008 sent hundreds of observers to monitor elections, has declined to participate in this year’s poll.
Transparency International also announced Thursday that it would deploy 822 of its own election observers to 411 polling stations across the country.
