Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) says it has won 68 seats compared with the opposition’s 55 – out of 123 available. Though the CNRP gained 26 seats for the new coalition, the opposition was satisfied by neither the increase nor the potential emergence of a two-party system.
Mr. Hun Sen has been in power in Cambodia since 1985, and the CPP had been widely expected to win the election, but the widespread reports of polling irregularities – including reports that the indelible ink used to indicate that someone had voted was easily washed off, and that voters went to the polls only to find out that someone else had already used their ballot – marred the results.
The Cambodian wing of Transparency International, a global corruption research group, called for an investigation, saying that 60 percent of polling stations had complaints from voters who said they were not on voter lists.
“It was rigged,” says Mam Sonando, a radio journalist jailed numerous times on charges of “insurrection,” adding that Cambodians may yet take to the streets to protest the election outcome.