CPP’s political machine purring in Ratanakkiri
Welcome to CPP country. On the roads snaking up from Banlung through Ratanakkiri’s lush mountain passes up to O’Yadav district, samdechs peer down from billboards and farmers in dirt-streaked party shirts speed past on dilapidated motorbikes. It is perhaps a measure of how successful the ruling party has been here that campaigning was nil on a recent visit. Homes and cars are not blanketed with stickers, and no one stands on the street blasting music and screaming “number four”. A machine as large and well-oiled as this has no need for such campaigning mainstays. On Thursday, the single opposition candidate who may have posed something of a nuisance in this election was swiftly nullified when he defected to the ruling party in a televised press conference. Ensconced in an office blanketed with luxury wood products, the CPP chief of Lumchor commune, Sev Thon, grew wide-eyed when a reporter told him about the defection. …
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cpp%E2%80%99s-political-machine-purring-ratanakkiri
