kompong cham town – With 18 National Assembly seats up for election and two of the country’s top officials—Funcinpec President Prince Norodom Ranariddh and opposition party leader Sam Rainsy—running in Kompong Cham, it was expected that this royalist stronghold would be the scene of a hotly contested race.
Yet a relative calm settled in Kompong Cham province on Election Day, with only minor cases of polling booth irregularities and a few instances of intimidation reported Sunday.
“I hope we get more of the available seats than the other parties during this election,” Heng Samrin, honorary president of the CPP and deputy Assembly president, said Sunday.
Heng Samrin, the CPP’s first candidate for Kompong Cham, spoke briefly to reporters after exiting a polling booth in Kompong Cham town. “I hope we will get more supporters than during [the 1998 general elections],” Heng Samrin said. He predicted that the CPP would dominate the elections throughout the country.
Heng Samrin was the only top candidate from the three major parties to visit Kompong Cham on Election Day. Sam Rainsy, who said early on Sunday that he would visit the province, where he was running as the party’s top candidate, stayed in Phnom Penh, where he was registered to vote.
Prince Ranariddh—who campaigned in Kompong Cham province only twice during the campaign period—also stayed away. Funcinpec Minister of Women’s Affairs Mu Sochua said Sunday the prince did not travel to Kompong Cham “because the situation is under control.”
Funcinpec took eight seats in Kompong Cham during the 1998 elections; the CPP won seven and the Sam Rainsy Party won three. Funcinpec’s hold on this province of 1.8 million has waned in recent years, however, with the CPP claiming control of an estimated 170 out of 173 communes during the 2002 commune elections.
Throughout the polling period Sunday, election observers from local and international organizations and various parties reported that this year’s elections were quiet compared to previous elections, with minor infractions such as parties “bribing” voters with
5 kg bags of rice or polling booths turning away voters for not having properly registered for the 2003 elections but having valid 2002 voter cards.
But many polling stations in the province had no observers monitoring this election, one official from the Neutral, Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said Sunday. For example, Nicfec has observers in about 700 of the province’s 1,858 polling stations, the official said.
Assailants wounded two Funcinpec supporters in Anlong Veal village in Tbong Khmum district in separate incidents on Saturday.
Police arrested Phal Bopha, 20, on Saturday in Anlong Veal village after he allegedly beat unconscious his uncle, Funcinpec supporter Chorn Var, at about 7:30 am, Funcinpec’s provincial deputy governor, Tav Kim Long, said.
An hour and a half later, Lon Sokhun, 34, allegedly shot Funcinpec supporter Heng Lim Kieng once with an AK-47, the deputy governor said. Both reports were confirmed by provincial police. Heng Lim Kieng is being treated in the Kompong Cham provincial hospital, and police are holding Lon Sokhun in the provincial prison.
Voters came out in droves to vote in Kompong Cham town Sunday morning and at one point a crowd of laughing voters at a polling booth almost overpowered a polling station worker manning the entrance.
“This voting is very simple,” said one voter, Nuth Ren, outside a polling station. “I feel safe because no one knows my vote.”
Guards at the Kompong Cham provincial prison also took four suspects awaiting trial to a nearby polling station to cast their ballots, prison officials said. The prison, acting on orders from the government, originally was scheduled to grant seven prisoners access to the voting booths but took only four after three of the prisoners fell ill, a prison official said.
