Rainsy Considers International Complaint Over Election Result
Opposition CNRP President Sam Rainsy on Friday expressed his intention to take his dissatisfaction with the outcome of the July national election, over which his party is boycotting its National Assembly seats, to an international stage. Speaking at the launch of a detailed election report by the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA), a coalition of NGOs and monitors, which called the result of the election into question, Mr. Rainsy asked two independent election experts their thoughts about how his party should proceed. “If I’m not happy, where should I file a complaint?” Mr. Rainsy asked Damuso Magbual, chairman of the Asian Network for Free Elections, and Vladimir Pran, an expert from Democracy Reporting International. “Is there any international jurisdiction in which I can file a complaint?” Mr. Pran said there is no international court in which Mr. Rainsy could take such action and that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not refer to any kind of complaints mechanism. But speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference Friday, Mr. Rainsy insisted that he still intends to seek help outside Cambodia over the months-long standoff that has seen the opposition’s 55 elected lawmakers refuse to take their seats in parliament. …
Khy Sovuthy and Lauren Crothers
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/rainsy-considers-international-complaint-over-election-result-49327/
