The Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (Comfrel) on Monday released its first annual assessment of the CPP government’s 16-plank policy platform for the current electoral term, marking only six planks as “fully fulfilled” in 2014.
At a press conference at the election-monitoring organization’s offices in Phnom Penh, Yang Kim Eng, a member of Comfrel’s board of directors, said that an analysis had found that the majority of the government’s pledges had not been met in its first year in office.
“We found that some precise indicators that the government promised to achieve in their main sectors were not fully fulfilled as they had fixed in their political platform,” he said. “Most of the main sectors were not fulfilled.”
The policies fulfilled in 2014, Mr. Kim Eng said, were economic growth of 7 percent, a 1 percent reduction in poverty, the halting of land concessions, improvement of rural roads, creation of a transport policy and an increase in tourists.
Among the seven other planks only “partly fulfilled” by the CPP government, Mr. Kim Eng said, were increases in land title registration, the creation of a national housing supply policy, and the construction of secondary schools in all communes.
Comfrel said that three of the government’s pledges—to increase milled rice exports to 1 million tons by 2015, keep forest cover steady, and implement “retirement allowances in the private sector”—have remained outright unfulfilled.
“We have already calculated it and found that the government will not be able to export 1 million tons of rice this year because the export figure last year was too low,” Mr. Kim Eng said.
Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan rejected the mostly dim assessment from Comfrel, saying the government was working toward achieving its promises over the entire five-year term.
“Comfrel is an NGO opposed to the government, which insults the government,” he said. “The government is working hard to attend to what it has earmarked in its five-year plan.
“This commitment is over five years,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Alex Willemyns)
