The ruling CPP will hold a large roadshow on Friday to end the two-week election campaign period, with the party expecting in excess of 50,000 supporters.
Tens of thousands of voters will enter polling booths on June 5 to vote on a ballot with only one party to choose from: In 24 communes, including eight in Phnom Penh, the ruling CPP is the only available choice.
In a ruling-party stronghold, where the Prime Minister’s Bodyguard Unit has a base and its presence is heavily felt, few are willing to stick out their necks — except for a 73-year-old opposition commune-chief candidate.
O’Smach commune was the exception to the ruling party’s near-sweep of Oddar Meanchey province in 2017. Even the sitting CPP commune chief admits: “People here think differently. If they have a problem with their leaders, they want to change them.”
The Kampong Cham provincial election committee fined Candlelight Party commune-chief candidate Kung Raiya around $1,250 for insulting the competition, but he was cleared over distributing money to colleagues, an NEC spokesman said.
Social media photos show mostly older voters handed a pen and mock ballot and, under supervision from officials, shown how to pick the CPP.
In Kampong Thom’s Sakream commune, the Grassroots Democratic Party’s Choeun Nasy spent five years trying to work with the ruling CPP in his role as second deputy chief. “I almost gave up,” he says.
After a hydropower dam forced resettlement, most Sesan residents made new lives in a grid of identical stilted houses in New Srekor, while some resisters founded Old Srekor. An ex-opposition commune chief is now looking to make a comeback in a split community.
The ruling party is replacing sitting commune chiefs with new candidates in hundreds of communes for the upcoming vote. The chiefs are largely stepping down by choice, and the party will continue to take care of them, a spokesperson said.
A ruling party representative in Kampong Cham is escalating a request to remove Candlelight Party candidate Kung Raiya and others from the upcoming ballot based on a complaint about Raiya distributing money to colleagues.
VOD is an independent media outlet producing radio programs and disseminating information to the public via the Internet.
© 2019 VOD. All Rights Reserved.
