News

The National Election Committee (NEC) announced that it received 51,950 candidacy applications from 16 political parties for the fifth mandate commune council elections scheduled for June 5 – on just the first day of the March 4-6 registration period. ...

Preventing spoiled ballots and improving complaint resolution were top of the agenda when the National Election Committee met at the weekend to discuss ways to improve the commune polls. ...

The National Election Committee plans to hold a two-day meeting in Preah Sihanouk province to review the June 4 commune elections, with members of the election monitoring coalition the “Situation Room” saying yesterday they plan to table recommendations to improve certain electoral procedures. ...

The French government has thrown its backing behind Cambodia’s recent commune elections, saying the polls went smoothly and were free and fair. ...

The country’s election authority released its official results for the June 4 commune elections on schedule on Sunday, calling 1,156 out of a total 1,646 communes for the CPP, which also won 6,503 of the 11,572 council seats up for grabs. ...

Transparency International (TI) Cambodia yesterday said that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party appeard to have won 49.4 percent of the nationwide popular vote on June 4 based on the stations it monitored, nearly six percentage points ahead of the CNRP’s 43.2 percent. ...

Out of 64 complaints filed with the National Election Committee (NEC) over the June 4 commune elections, only two remain outstanding, the election body said yesterday. ...

The National Election Committee (NEC) on Monday said it would not pursue immediate legal action against Facebook page owners it accused of spreading “inciting” news about its work, but would take unspecified action if false accusations continued. ...

Opposition leader Kem Sokha said in an interview on Saturday that he believed Prime Minister Hun Sen could be compelled to relinquish power if he loses the July 2018 national election and that his party’s task was now to present itself as a group ready ...

Ballot recounts on Wednesday secured the opposition CNRP two more commune wins—one each in Battambang and Kompong Thom provinces—a day after the first of 40 contested communes in the June 4 local elections swung to the CPP. Nguon Kolboth, a CPP representative who was at ...

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party has canceled plans for failed local election candidates to be appointed to advisory positions in the government. ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW), long one of the government’s harshest critics, on Tuesday condemned the June 4 commune elections as “neither free nor fair” and called for urgent reforms to safeguard next year’s national election. ...

The national election body will today start recounting votes for communes across the country where the winners in June 4’s commune elections were decided by the narrowest of margins. ...

The mixed results of the June 4 commune elections may have allowed both major parties to save face, but the opposition’s large gains show it has a serious chance of winning next year’s national election – and that could attract violent backlash from the government, ...

Already looking ahead to 2018, Prime Minister Hun Sen has told his Cambodian People’s Party that had Sunday’s commune elections been a national election, they would have won even more National Assembly seats than they did in 2013. ...

Ten union representatives were yesterday suspended from the Southland garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district after more than a thousand workers went on strike to protest the factory’s decisions about time taken off for voting in Sunday’s commune elections. ...

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak’s pre-election warning that some NGOs and their leaders were being watched for illegally aiding the opposition was a threat designed to frighten them, General Sopheak said on Wednesday, as civil society groups warily condemned the statements. ...

Phnom Penh’s sole garbage hauler says it will need another week to collect thousands of tons of fetid garbage that piled up over the weekend when workers left the capital to vote in Sunday’s commune elections. ...

Asian election monitor Anfrel yesterday commended authorities, citizens and political parties for Sunday’s smooth commune elections, but stopped short of calling the ballot “free and fair”, raising concerns over the heightened political rhetoric in the run-up to June 4. ...

Although the official results will not be released until June 25, the closely watched vote for Cambodia’s commune council elections showed the opposition’s growing strength and suggest that the national elections in 2018 will be a race between two parties. ...

The Cambodian People’s Party won 70 percent of the country’s 1,646 commune councils at yesterday’s elections, according to unofficial results published by a government-aligned media outlet – a marked drop from the 97 percent it won in 2012 but one far smaller than the opposition ...

The amount of money political parties spent on the campaign trail ahead of yesterday’s nationwide commune elections varied wildly, with observers and party members yesterday blaming the lack of a campaign finance law in Cambodia for what they characterised as the uneven playing field among ...

A lack of official results did not stop both major political parties from claiming victory in Cambodia’s highest-stakes and highest-turnout local elections to date on Sunday, with the CPP citing its dominance in winning commune chief seats and the CNRP boasting of huge opposition gains ...

Union leaders have admitted they were surprised at the high number of factory workers who returned to the provinces from Phnom Penh to cast their vote in the commune elections. ...