Election officers defend training

When ballot boxes from Battambang are opened today as part of an ongoing Constitutional Council investigation, any unsealed documents will likely be attributed to insufficient training. That is the excuse National Election Committee secretary-general, Tep Nytha, gave on Sunday amid concerns over the documents’ integrity. But officials in Battambang and Kampong Cham provinces yesterday defended the training, painting a more complex picture of their technical know-how, while at least one election monitor suggested that the number of unsealed safety packages among those examined may be too high to indicate mere carelessness. Despite the fact that Nytha has said workers received only a few hours of training, Sok Chhin, deputy chief of the Kampong Cham Provincial Election Committee, said yesterday that polling place workers in his province received two days of training, and that what they received was “better training compared to previous elections”. “We were trained by the NEC, and we trained the [Commune Election Committee], and the CEC trained the electoral officials who were recruited from the general public,” Chhin said, noting that training explicitly focused on sealing the packages. …  

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