The Sam Rainsy Party on Tuesday took issue with the UN-coordinated Joint International Observer Group’s labeling elections as “credible,” saying the observers visited voting stations for only a shred of the total hours.
“At best, JIOG observed barely over 1 percent of the polling on July 26,” the statement said, drawing on JIOG spokesman Sven Linder’s estimations and the party’s own calculations.
“This hardly qualifies JIOG or its chair to make sweeping statements about fairness at the polls, let alone to say that the outcome …reflects ‘in a credible way, the will of the Cambodian people.’”
The party also said it hopes the group “will make clear the exact extent of…its capacity to observe and analyze the ongoing electoral process.”
Linder said on July 27 that 500 observers visited 2,200 of the country’s 11,699 polling stations. The Sam Rainsy statement cited observers as saying they spent about 20 minutes at each station during the nine-hour vote period.
