May local elections in Cambodia: COMFREL says results are a foregone conclusion

O' Tapaong (Pursat, Cambodia). 26/05/2008: Sam Rainsy Party sign in a storm on the road to Phnom Penh.
©John Vink/ Magnum

Ka-set

By Duong Sokha
26-02-2009

They will be held on May 17th but there is already no doubt as to their outcome, three months before polling day: the elections of new councils for the capital, districts, provinces and municipalities of Cambodia will consecrate the members of the almighty Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL), an important local organisation for the observation of elections, revealed on Wednesday February 25 its first estimations: a landslide victory for the ruling political formation which will only leave next to nothing for the three other parties sitting in the National Assembly. The chosen polling format, the indirect suffrage, does not leave much leeway and deprives citizens of any participation, a detail which could have changed the whole deal, COMFREL denounces, deploring in the meantime the average cost of those polls per voter, said to be fifty times more important than that of the July 2008 legislative elections.

A simple calculation
The organisation for the observation of elections in Cambodia Comfrel did not need to engage in knotty calculations to estimate the distribution of seats between the four parties represented at the commune level: given the fact that commune councillors only will be called to cast their vote on may 17th to elect the new councillors for the capital, provinces, municipalities and districts of Cambodia, it is easy to guess, whilst taking into account the affiliations of the electorate, who will end up voting for whom. COMFREL simply established a relation between the total number of seats for the future councillors, and that of the commune councillors, party by party.

Thus, out of the 21 seats reserved for the council of the capital, Phnom Penh, the party of prime Minister Hun Sen, the CPP, will obtain according to estimations made by COMFREL, 61.9% of the vote of the electorate, i.e. 13 seats, compared to 8 for the main opposition formation, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), while the two royalist brothers, FUNCINPEC and the Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP) will not have any elected representative.

The only uncertainty: the attitude of NRP and FUNCINPEC elected representatives
Out of the twenty-three provincial councils in the Kingdom, the CPP would supposedly take the lion’s share: 273 seats (77.34%) compared to 69 for the SRP, 7 for the NRP and 4 for FUNCINPEC. “If FUNCINPEC and the NRP cooperate, results might change, according to the authors of the COMFREL report. The CPP would win 272 seats and the SRP, 68. FUNCINPEC and the NRP might gather altogether 13 seats”. This eventuality seems to be emerging as the two warring brothers signed a “Royalist” Memorandum of Understanding on February 2nd2009, in preparation for the May 17th elections.

As for the 2,862 seats of the 193 councils of municipalities and districts of Cambodia, they will be distributed as follows, according to COMFREL: 2,150 seats for the ruling party (75.15%), 618 for the SRP, 53 for the NRP and 40 for the FUNCINPEC. Once again, a collaboration between the two royalist formations would slightly modify the deal to the detriment of the CPP (20 seats less, i.e. 2,130) and the SRP (5 less, i.e. 613) but at the benefit of FUNCINPEC-NRP union which could pride itself the election of 118 councillors.

All in all, at all local levels, the Cambodian People’s Party should consolidate its domination over the whole political stage, with a total of 2,436 seats compared to 695 for the formation led by Sam Rainsy (which would only have elected representatives within the councils of Phnom Penh, of 21 out of 23 provinces and 172 out of 193 municipalities and districts. Taking into account a potential union of the so-called Royalist formations, the difference would be minor: the CPP would still be well ahead with 2,415 seats, when the SRP would get 689 seats and the FUNCINPEC and the NRP would share together the remaining 131 seats in 9 provinces and 78 municipalities and districts.

Although it is represented within the National Assembly, the second opposition party - the Human Rights Party (HRP), led by Kem Sokha – will not have a single elected representative since its creation dates back to July 2007, i.e. after the last commune elections in April 2007. The party, as a consequence, does not have any electorate.

Costly elections, devoid of any matter at stake
Unless an unlikely political earthquake shakes the whole stage, those estimations should not be very far from reality. For COMFREL, who insists on saying that these are only “unofficial calculations”, the good of this study is therefore and above all to allow for a subsequent control of the official results but especially to encourage the reform of the election system for these councils for the future mandates.

The organisation for the observation of elections is indeed seizing this opportunity to repeat its criticism towards elections which will not interest citizens, because the polling mode is that of the indirect suffrage, which deprives them of any participation. According to COMFREL, the vote of commune councillors does not suggest any surprise: “There is no reason why they would not vote for their formation, since they benefit from the power and interests that their party enjoys, unless they receive money from other parties”, COMFREL reports.

Devoid of challenges at stake, those elections are also quite pricey. Even worse, COMFREL says: in proportion, expenses will be a lot higher than those spent for the July 2008 legislative elections. “They amounted to 16.76 million dollars for 8,125,529 voters back then, or an average cost of 2.6 dollars per voter. For the council elections, the National Election Committee (NEC) allowed 1.5million dollars for just 11353 voters [i.e. the total number of commune councilors who will be able to vote], i.e. an average cost of 132.12 dollars per voter”, the Cambodian organisation denounces, adding that it “does not take an interest in the process of elections:”, but however, is “ready to collaborate with the councils after the polls.