Cambodia election: National election committee website DOWN amid international media ban

The National Election Committee is an independent agency that supervises the national elections in the country, with its official motto being “Independence, Neutrality, Truthfulness, Justice and Transparency”.

But its website has been down today, just hours before the country’s people vote in the general elections, leaving updates and progress on the event shrouded in mystery.

On Friday, Cambodia blocked international news agencies from accessing independent media websites, with Reuters saying it could not reach a Government spokesperson for comment.

Following last year’s local elections that saw saw the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) make significant gains, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for more than 30 years, launched a huge crackdown on dissidents, the media and rights organisations that he had accused of trying to overthrow the Government.

This saw 30 radio stations closed down, along with English-language newspaper Cambodia Daily.

Cambodia has been embroiled in a democracy row, with Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) expected to sweep to a landslide win.

This is despite 19 parties standing in opposition, but none are strongly critical of the Prime Minister or the Government, and aren’t seen as a serious threat to the ruling party.

Hun Sen’s closest rival this year could have been the CNRP, which narrowly lost the last general election in 2013, but it was dissolved by the Supreme Court in October 2017, with many of its lawmakers banned from politics for five years.

Brad Adams, Asia director of campaign group Human Rights Watch, said: “The Cambodian Government over the past year has systematically cracked down on independent and opposition voices to ensure that the ruling party faces no obstacles to total political control.

“Dissolving the main opposition party and banning many of its senior members from politics means this election cannot possibly reflect the will of the Cambodian people.”

Cambodia’s main opposition politicians have branded the election a “sham”, while Human Rights Watch labeled it “fundamentally flawed and warned that banning the biggest opposition from the vote makes it “meaningless”.

CNRP vice president Mu Socha 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.”

Dim Sovannarom, a spokesman for the National Election Committee, had told reporters that it expects 60 percent of registered voters in Cambodia to cast their ballot.

This would be down from 70 percent for the last general election in 2017.