­­Election Monitoring in Kampong Speu

This past Sunday marked Cambodia’s fourth parliamentary elections since the UN came to Cambodia in the early ‘90s. As an interested observer in Cambodian politics since I arrived, I registered to be a local election monitor with COMFREL, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia. Some 10,000 monitors were fielded for Cambodia’s 15,000 polling stations, with a majority of them coming from COMFREL. Most observers were either Cambodian or foreign observers sponsored by foreign governments.

When I registered to monitor, COMFREL asked me where in Cambodia I wanted to go. I responded by saying that I would be happy to go anywhere outside of Phnom Penh that was “interesting.” They stuck me in Kampong Speu, one of Cambodia’s poorest provinces, about 50km southwest of Phnom Penh, and representing six of Cambodia’s 123 seats at parliament.

I took a minibus down to Kampong Speu on Saturday morning and planned to stay with my friend Matt, who is based in “The Speu” with the World Food Programme. Matt had two other friends coming to the Speu to monitor for the Australian government. This ended up being quite a blessing, as we were able to explore a bit on Saturday in an Australian government Land Cruiser. We went through Chbar Mon District which encompasses Kampong Speu town, to Kong Pisey, driving over back roads by pagodas and through villages. It was a great way to get an introduction to the province we would be traversing as election monitors the next day.

Early on Sunday morning I met my translator, Virak, outside of Matt’s house and we set off. Our first stop was a primary school in Kampong Speu town. We arrived about a half hour before the polls were to open to conduct a number of checks. I walked around the outside of the polling station and immediately observed a police officer and a military police official in uniform, a possible attempt to intimidate voters.

When I entered the polling station, it was set up exactly as in the UN-developed video I was shown at my COMFREL training. There were a number of political party observers and about half a dozen election officials. There were tables for the polling station chief, for checking people in, issuing ballots, polling booths, the ballot box, and dipping voters’ fingers into indelible ink. The empty ballot box was shown to the observers and sealed and a number of other checks were made prior to opening the polling station.

At precisely 7:00am, the polling station opened to the crowd that had already gathered. People filed in an orderly manner, one at a time. They showed their identification card and voter information sheet to an election official before being issued a ballot. They then voted in a polling booth – a table with a three-sided metal screen creating some privacy. After a vote was cast for one of the eleven parties, the voter showed the official seal on the ballot and stuffed it into the ballot box. Next, they reluctantly stuck their fingers in a container of indelible ink, which left their fingers looking purple (and would continue to leave them purple for a week).

Eager to see something a bit more rural, we left the primary school and made a quick stop for some noodles for breakfast. At breakfast we met COMFREL’s provincial coordinator, the woman in charge of monitoring the elections throughout the province. Though she couldn’t speak English very well, she insisted that Virak and I join her for the day. So after breakfast we headed north to Somrong Raung District where there were reports of election officials refusing an election monitor entry to the polling station. Once we got there, however, the monitor had been let in and everything was running smoothly.

From Somrong Raung District, we headed about 40km southwest to the quite rural Phnom Srouch District. It was evident there was a fairly serious problem at the first polling station we visited. Outside each polling station is a list of names of voters who are supposed to vote at that polling station. Outside this first polling station were several dozen voters scouring the list trying to find their names unsuccessfully. A circle formed around us as voters voiced their complaints. They were clearly upset that, despite having all necessary information and having voted at the same location the year before for commune elections, they were unable to cast a ballot. We took down their information and set off for other polling stations in the district.

At each station we went to the story was the same. There were numerous voters unable to cast their ballot because their name was not on the list outside the station. People estimated that as many as 4,000 voters’ names were missing in Phnom Srouch District alone - probably a mix of village chiefs intentionally eliminating names of those associated with the opposition and the National Election Committee attempting to clean up the rolls by removing ghost voters and duplicates (though I assume that it is more of the former). At about the same time, I got a text message from COMFREL in Phnom Penh warning us that missing names was a problem countrywide, particularly in Phnom Penh. Though we helped voters fill out complaint forms, it is unlikely that they had an affect; the ruling party has a total stranglehold on the country’s political system, controlling the private sector, the media, and the entire political system, top to bottom (including the national, provincial, and commune level election committees which review complaints).

It was getting late so we headed back toward Kampong Speu town. A few kilometers outside town we stopped at a polling station to watch the station be closed down. After the morning rush, most polling stations were pretty quiet and only one voter came through in the last half hour the station was open. The closing of the polling station took quite some time – sealing the ballot box, counting the number of ballots cast, and so on. I watched the counting for about forty-five minutes before heading back to Matt’s house to catch a ride in the Land Cruiser back to Phnom Penh.

On Monday morning when initial results were reported, there weren’t any surprises. The ruling party claimed an overwhelming majority of seats (between 88 and 91 of 123, up from 73). Though the opposition has claimed that 200,000 people were unable to vote in Phnom Penh alone, international observers put the estimate at closer to 50,000 nationwide; a high number to be sure, but not nearly high enough to impact the outcome. The election was widely viewed as free and although perhaps not fair, an improvement over previous elections in terms of electioneering.