A month before the elections, Parliament approved a rule that penalizes the boycott of an appointment that was rendered meaningless after the disqualification of the Candlelight Party: those who do not go to the polls will not be able to present themselves as candidates for at least four consecutive elections. According to human rights defenders, this is another campaign of intimidation by the prime minister-dictator.
Phnom Penh ( / Agencies) – The Cambodian Parliament today unanimously approved an amendment to the electoral law according to which those who do not participate in next month’s national elections will be punished. The vote is perceived from abroad as a farce, after the premier-dictator Hun Sen, in power for almost 40 years, suppressed any form of opposition.
Earlier this month, the Election Commission announced that anyone who urges people not to vote will be fined or imprisoned. The Prime Minister then asked Parliament to revise legislation so that those who boycott the July 23 election are barred from running in future elections. “Anyone who does not vote without proper reason will lose the right to stand for four consecutive elections,” Sar Kheng, deputy prime minister and interior minister, said in a Facebook post. Without specifying what constitutes an “appropriate reason,” he also added that “the amendments impose fines and punish persons who disrupt or obstruct the voter registration process and the conduct of elections.”
The measure was passed to go after prominent opposition figures who fled the country to avoid convictions for political reasons. National elections in Cambodia are held every five years and it is not possible to vote from abroad. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has lived in exile in France since 2015, while Kem Sokha, another political opponent, was sentenced in March to 27 years in prison on charges of treason.
According to human rights defenders, it is an intimidation campaign, but the Cambodian government claims it is a way of enforcing the law. “This shows that this is a dictatorship playing democracy,” said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. “Civil rights and political freedom have been totally and completely restricted by Prime Minister Hun Sen and his government,” he specified.
In the last elections in 2018, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party won all parliamentary seats with 4.8 million votes out of a total of 6.9 million cast. The only opposition party, the Candlelight Party, was first decimated and then disqualified by the Electoral Commission, officially for irregularities in the presentation of documents.
Photo: Cambonian National Assembly
