Sitting on the floor of her neighbor’s home, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, 28-year-old mother Ro Kiya described last Saturday when her eight-month-old baby disappeared.

With 30 days left to go until the polls, the National Election Com­mittee is scrambling to find en­ough money to complete the process and even to pay its em­ployees next month.

The opposition was brazen and  Second Prime Minister Hun Sen quietly confident as thousands of people clogged some of Phnom Penh’s streets Thursday morning for campaign ’98’s official start.

The most thorough profile on poverty in Cambodia ever completed shows 36 percent of citizens live in poverty, and more than half of those are not getting enough food to eat.

Racked with controversy since its remaining members were appointed last month, the Con­stitutional Council has a new critic in its midst. Say Bory, who earlier this month was calling the council “illegal,” was appointed to the nation’s top legal body by the King on Thursday. 

At least six opposition newspapers say they will defy a ban on publishing political propaganda during the election campaign, even if it means risking safety.

ansaong village, Prey Veng province – Police are seeking a man in connection with last week’s murder near here of a woman married to a district-level Funcinpec official. 

Funcinpec officials are claiming that the slaying of a party information officer in Pursat province Tuesday was politically motivated, coming one day after party President Prince Norodom Rana­riddh visited the region.

A chain of banks co-owned by prominent local businessman Kong Triv has run short of cash, with customers being asked to give one week’s notice before withdrawing large sums.

The National Bank of Cam­bodia reiterated Tuesday its commitment to keep the riel steady at 4,000 to the US dollar until the elections, even if it means auctioning dollars twice a week.

Cambodia’s battle against malaria took to the international stage Wednesday, with a presentation by one of the country’s top specialists at a World Health Organization conference in Gen­eva. 

Health authorities have ap­proved a volunteer nurse training program at Phnom Penh Muni­cipal Hospital that AIDS activists hope will revive the city’s network of infectious-disease wards.

The National Election Com­mittee will not act on an appeal by an election monitoring group for immediate measures to ensure the neutrality of local election officials until it receives formal complaints.

“We need the reports of the observers. We must wait for complaints,” NEC spokesman Leng Sochea said Tuesday. He claimed that an apparent lack of neutrality was confined to a few individual cases and was not an endemic problem among election officials.

Leng Sochea was responding to a report by the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, Comfrel, that called on the NEC to take measures to ensure the impartiality and independence of local election officials.

“While voter registration took place relatively smoothly, the pro­cess was marred by serious and widespread violations of the electoral law and NEC regulations,” Comfrel warned.

The independent election monitoring group said the observations of its 2,000 staff placed throughout the country has led it to conclude that the local electoral commissions lacked “the competence, strength and neutrality necessary to en­sure a free and fair election process during the campaign, polling and vote counting.”

One particular concern raised by the group was the failure or unwillingness of election officials to prevent village and commune chiefs from entering registration stations and, in some cases, interfering with the registration pro­cess.

Several observer groups, in­cluding the European Union, have identified the interference or intimidating presence of village chiefs, the majority of whom are CPP, as one of the key concerns for a free and fair poll.

But while Leng Sochea said that the NEC needed such re­ports from observers in order to take action against its officials, he drew a distinction between the anomalies noted during registration and those likely to occur during the rest of the election campaign.

“In the registration period, we didn’t have the security forces of the government to help,” he said, explaining why election staff had not prevented local government officials from entering the registration stations. “During polling, we will be cooperating with the authorities and the security forces.”

Many critics, however, have questioned the neutrality of those forces, led by National Police Chief Hok Lundy, a known CPP hard-liner.

In one incident reported by Comfrel observers, a soldier fired gunshots into the air close to a registration station, undermining government prom­ises of discipline and neutrality among police and army ranks.

Other incidents in which election officials failed to recognize the observer status of Comfrel staff were brushed off by Leng Sochea as being the result of ignorance rather than political motivation.

He acknowledged the lack of experience and training of the local election officials, but said they were “trying to do their best” to ensure a “good atmosphere” for the July 26 polls.

ansaong village, Prey Veng province – Police here have arrested two suspects in an alleged political killing here, claiming the slaying was the result of a long-simmering family dispute.

A barely debated change in the formula allotting National As­sembly posts will give seats to the larger parties that would have gone to smaller ones in 1993.

Police confiscated 11 gambling tables and a cash register Mon­day night in a move to close what authorities said was an illegal cas­ino in the Princess Hotel on Monivong Boulevard.

One million Cambodians soon could be infected with the AIDS virus if tougher preventive measures are not taken, Minister for Health Chhea Thaing warned Tuesday. He was speaking at a meeting of the National Com­mittee for HIV/AIDS and STD Prevention and Control.

the cambodia daily

Election officials say they must reject an offer by Thailand to help register the estimated 55,000 eligible Cambodian voters in re­fugee camps.

“We cannot accept this proposal because registration finished on the 15th, and we cannot violate [the electoral] law by extending it,” Leng Sochea, spokesman for the National Election Committee, said Tuesday.

He added that the NEC was “proud” of what he characterized as an extremely successful voter registration period with about 98 percent of the eligible voters registered.

A day after registration ended, however, about 100 garment workers protested that their em­ployers hadn’t allowed them to register. There also have been allegations of voter intimidation.

Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said this week that it stood ready to help register Cambodian re­fu­gees in Thai border camps if Phnom Penh authorities extended the deadline.

The European Union’s chief election observer has given his overall stamp of approval to the first phase of the electoral pro­cess, but said concerns still remain over the political climate surrounding the polls themselves.