A top Buddhist leader has declared that the National Election Committee cannot use Buddhist temples as registration sites or polling stations for the general elections in July, NEC officials said Monday.
Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong of the Mohanikaya Buddhist sect said the NEC should use commune stations and not temples for the elections, since employing the religious buildings would be a strike against democracy.
“If you select my temple to be used as a polling station, it means Cambodia has no democracy,” Tep Vong said. “If Cambodia has democracy, people everywhere can vote.”
Under Cambodian law, the country’s more than 50,000 Buddhist monks have the right to vote but Tep Vong and Bou Kry, supreme patriarch of the Dhammayut sect, signed a public declaration in October urging monks to refrain from voting.
NEC spokesman Leng Sochea said Buddhist temples comprise 30 percent of the 12,845 public venues to be used for registration, voting and ballot counting.
“This will seriously affect NEC’s budget planning,” Leng Sochea said. “That’s almost 4,000 buildings we will not be able to use.” More than 2,000 of the country’s Buddhist temples were used as polling and registration sites during the 1998 elections, Leng Sochea said.
Responding to the NEC’s budget concerns, Tep Vong argued, “If the NEC is afraid to spend more money on the elections, then the elections should not be held at all.”
Leng Sochea said NEC cares less about election expenditures and more about political transparency. The temples’ large dining halls are ideal for vote counting, he said, because election monitors can pass from table to table to observe each step of the count.
The NEC has instructed its provincial staff to encourage chief religious leaders throughout the country to cooperate, Leng Sochea said. Tep Vong said the decision was final and there would be no further negotiations.
If the NEC ultimately cannot use the temples, Leng Sochea said, “We will try to find more money and schools.”
Although monks have long been encouraged to assume a neutral political stance, this is the first time the Buddhist community has made a motion to sever all political involvement.
Tep Vong said he decided to prohibit NEC’s use of the temples after meeting with several Buddhist monks, but officials within the Ministry of Cults and Religion said the meeting never took place.
