Elections

An increasing number of NGOs in Cambodia are facing the prospect of budget cuts, with money from foreign donors decreasing as a political deadlock continues. Cambodia’s robust civil society relies on donor countries, but some have postponed funding while the country’s two rival political parties remain ...

Three judicial reform draft laws will be submitted to the Council of Ministers last this month, justice officials said Wednesday. The draft laws deal with the functions of the courts and the conduct of judges and prosecutors, as well as an oversight body called the Supreme ...

Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Sam Rainsy met today with a Thai delegation at the CNRP headquarters. ...

A U.N. rights envoy to Cambodia on Wednesday expressed “cautious optimism” that the parties of Prime Minister Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy would move toward ending their seven-month political deadlock following an agreement achieved this week between the two sides on a set ...

When a group of six unions organized nationwide strikes in December demanding a $160 minimum wage, the opposition CNRP aggressively took up the cause. Opposition leaders rallied support outside factory gates around the country and tens of thousands of garment workers flooded into Phnom Penh’s Freedom ...

A new report by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Sydney has ranked Cambodia’s 2013 national election as the fifth most “flawed or failed” out of the 73 national ballots held around the world between July 2012 and December 2013. Based on surveys completed ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the government would not allow the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party to use garment workers as “political hostages” in a strongly worded rebuke of what he painted as a conspiratorial relationship between the CNRP and a number of ...

Cambodia’s ruling and opposition parties on Monday agreed to create a law governing the regulation of financing for political parties, as they opened negotiations to end the longstanding political deadlock and in hopes of reforming the election process. A joint statement by the ruling Cambodian People’s ...

More than five months after the Cambodian People’s Party and the Cambodia National Rescue Party first announced a joint commitment to electoral reform following a September 16 meeting, specific measures have finally been agreed upon. The first official meeting yesterday of a bipartisan committee tasked with ...

The ruling CPP agreed in principle to two of seven proposals put forth by the opposition CNRP on Monday during the first meeting of a joint electoral reform commission. Emerging from a four-and-a-half hour meeting at the Senate, leaders of the CPP and CNRP working groups ...

Five political parties have registered to take part in provincial and district elections in May, officials said Tuesday. The elections are approaching despite a deadlock in national politics between the ruling party and the opposition—which wants election reform and a recall national vote. Only members of local ...

The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party today agreed to pave the way for the creation of a law on financing of political parties. Working groups from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party met ...

The Joint-Committee on Electoral Reforms, established during a meeting between senior officials of the ruling and opposition parties last month, convened its first meeting on Monday to discuss topics for electoral reforms toward free and fair elections in the future. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)’s ...

The Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit (PQRU) on Friday published an extended criticism of a speech made by opposition leader Sam Rainsy last week in which he promised his supporters that the political change that swept Ukraine’s president from power​​ would soon ...

Three parties – the Cambodian People’s Party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party and Funcinpec – were registered for the May 18 municipal, district and provincial council election as of Saturday, according to the National Election Committee. “As the deadline will close on March 3rd, I think ...

While a bipartisan election reform committee meeting today is meant only to discuss technical reforms and leave key political concessions to future top-level talks, observers yesterday said a lot more is likely to be on the table. That hope comes despite public barbs having been traded ...

The U.S. State Department on Friday released a damning assessment of the conduct of Cambodia’s elections and also took note of the “arbitrary and possibly unlawful” killing of a bystander by government forces and other human rights concerns in a report on human rights around ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday sentenced three men of six suspects to prison terms for their role in the September 15 clashes on Monivong Bridge between police and stone throwing youths, during which a man was killed and several were wounded by police ...

Cambodia’s national election in July ranked 69th out of 73 elections held worldwide between mid-2012 and the end of 2013 for electoral integrity, an election research group based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University has found. The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) collected assessments from ...

Cambodian political analysts say a new royalist party would have little hope of success. Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who once led Cambodia’s dominant post-war political party, Funcinpec, told VOA Khmer on Monday he plans to launch a new royalist party for commune elections later this year and ...

SA’ANG DISTRICT, Kandal province – A little over a month after supporters of Prime Minister Hun Sen forced the cancellation of an opposition party rally here, CNRP leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha returned to address followers and promise that the change that swept away ...

The ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) decided to cancel their meeting, which is scheduled for February 27, according to a CNRP official. The meeting of the two parties’ working groups was suspended not because of political issues, but ...

Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who became first prime minister of Cambodia after the 1993 U.N.-sponsored elections, will form a new party and re-enter the political arena, according to his cabinet chief. “The prince has a plan to create a new party,” said Naranarith Anandayath, chief of Prince ...

The first meeting of a joint election-reform committee that was agreed to last week by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party will meet for the first time on Thursday, officials from both sides said yesterday. Each side has appointed six ...