The final results of Sunday’s national election will not be announced until mid-August, the secretary-general of the National Election Committee (NEC) said Monday.
The latest possible release date would be early September, Tep Nytha said, adding that the speed with which they were announced depended on whether the NEC and Constitutional Council of Cambodia received many complaints alleging irregularities.
The opposition on Monday rejected preliminary results—which saw them win 55 parliamentary seats to the Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP) 68—citing widespread fraud.
“The NEC has not issued the nationwide figure of each party,” he added. “The public can calculate that themselves” from watching province-by-province results, which are being released on television.
Final results would also be broadcast nationwide, he said.
“We have [so far] not released preliminary results besides on TV, so to get the results you will have to get it from TV,” he said.
According to provincial-level preliminary results available on the NEC website, the CPP received 2,555,030 votes to the Cambodia National Rescue Party’s (CNRP) 2,295,022.
CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann said Monday that the party did not accept the results released by the NEC so far because of irregularities such as people’s names being removed or names being listed twice.
“We cannot accept these results issued by the NEC because many people have lost their names and cannot vote, and many other illegal things happened during this election,” he said.
Chheang Vun, a CPP lawmaker, defended the results released by the NEC so far.
“I think what the NEC has done was not wrong,” he said.
The CPP released a statement on its website on Sunday night saying that the results released on TVK show it has enough seats to form a government in the new mandate.
“The CPP thanks those Cambodian people who voted for the CPP to run the government for five more years,” the statement reads. “The CPP appeals to the people to please keep calm as the NEC continues with its task.”
