Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) is expected to win a one-sided race, despite 19 political parties standing in opposition, but none are strongly critical of the Prime Minister or the Government.
The events of this years election campaign are in stark contrast to what happened 12 months ago during the local elections, when opposition rallies drew crowds from across the country.
Now, other than campaign posters plastered across the capital of Phenom Penh and the occasional car shouting ruling party propaganda through a bullhorn, there is little sign that a general election is taking place.
The main challenge to Hun Sen, who has been in power for 33 years and is the world’s longest-serving Prime Minister, should be the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which narrowly lost the last general election in 2013.
But following last year’s local elections, Hun Sen launched a crackdown on dissidents, the media and rights organisations that he accused of trying to overthrow the Government.
By the end of 2017, the CNRP had been dissolved by the Supreme Court, with many of its lawmakers banned from politics for five years.
Due to the lack of real opposition, Sunday’s elections have already been declared a “sham” by Cambodia’s main opposition politicians, while campaigning group Human Rights Watch has labelled the elections “fundamentally flawed” and has warned that banning the main opposition makes the vote makes it “meaningless”.
CNRP vice president Mu Sochua told US-based National Public Radio (NPR): “Democracy for Cambodia is at stake,” and also told Reuters: “Any country supporting, or that is hesitant to denounce the election as a sham, should not call itself on the side of democracy.”
She has been living in exile in Portugal since she and several other opposition leaders fled the country last October, after their party’s co-founder, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason a month earlier, leaving Hun Sen with no significant opponent.
Voting in the election isn’t mandatory, but authorities have warned that anyone who boycott it will be seen as a “traitor”.
Despite the controversy and lack of interest surround it, Dim Sovannarom, a spokesman for the National Election Committee, told reporters he still expects more than 60 percent of registered voters in Cambodia to cast their ballot.
This would compare to 70 percent from the election in 2013.
Astrid Norén-Nilsson, associate senior lecturer at the Centre for East and south-East Asian studies at Lund University believes that Cambodia is going through a political transformation.
She thinks the main point of Sunday’s election is for Hun Sen to introduce fewer democratic freedoms, something that is unpalatable to many Cambodians.
The politics expert told NPR: “I think ordinary Cambodians, almost without exception, want Cambodia to be a democracy, even though there may not be even a minimal agreement in society about what democracy means.”