Ruling party signs have begun cropping up on or near provincial police stations, a symbol that the CPP is trying to intimidate people voting in commune elections, opposition lawmakers say.
“There is no neutrality and freedom in commune elections…local authorities are dominated by the ruling party,” Senator Choa Phally of the Sam Rainsy Party said last week, before the Senate passed the commune election legislation.
Choa Phally said the signs should come down before any elections are held.
Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, acknowledged that signs posted near police and government offices might be confusing, but it is a result of the CPP putting local headquarters near the government offices years ago. He promised to start taking signs down, but said the process will take time.
“We believe in doing this, but we need time and budget to implement it. We have worked to separate the party’s sign board from the communes’ sign board,” Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the ministry of the interior, said.
Human rights officials have called on political parties not to post their signs near government offices, especially now that commune elections appear to be on track after being stalled for years.
Both Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party have begun their lead-up to the elections, tentatively scheduled for early 2002, by posting newly painted signs along prominent roadways in the countryside, hoping to remind the predominantly CPP-controlled rural areas of their presence.
All three parties have in the past accused each other of paying home-owners to post their signs, regardless of the resident’s political allegiance.
Opposition party members and Funcinpec Senator Soeng Oeurn also said police officers and soldiers should not be allowed to vote because they should have no political allegiances.
You Hockry, the government’s representative for the commune election law and co-minister for the Ministry of Interior, said that soldiers were just exercising their right to free speech and to vote.
“We had talked…when creating this law on whether or not police and soldiers should have the right to vote. If we do not let them vote, their freedom is gone,” he said.
