Cambodians vote with main Opp silenced

With the main Opposition silenced, Cambodians voted in an election Sunday virtually certain to return to office Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for more than three decades.

Although 20 parties contested the polls, the only one with the popularity and organization to mount a credible challenge, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, was dissolved last year by the Supreme Court.

Charging that the polls were neither free nor fair, the CNRP’s former leaders had urged people not to vote in what was dubbed a “Clean Finger” campaign because those who did cast ballots had to dip a finger in indelible ink, a practice meant to thwart multiple voting.

Local and foreign rights groups, along with several Western governments, had agreed that the polls would not be credible.

According to figures released by National Election Committee chairman Sik Bun Hok about two hours after the polls closed, some 6.7 million people turned out to vote, or roughly 80 percent of the 8.3 million registered voters.

The figure, if correct, would suggest that the promotion by opposition forces of a poll boycott was ineffective. In the last general election in 2013, voter turnout was 6.6 million, or 68.5 percent of 9.7 million registered voters.

Preliminary election results are expected later Sunday night.

Hun Sen said on his Facebook page that he welcomed the big turnout, and congratulated his countrymen for exercising their right to vote.

Opposition forces, who had already judged the polls not to be free and fair because of the exclusion of the only credible challenger, can point to two reasons for the alleged failure of the boycott movement.