NEC president Prach Chan (centre) holds a meeting in January. POST STAFF
The National Election Committee (NEC) has agreed to meet with representatives from four political parties – Grassroots Democratic (GDP), Khmer Will (KWP), Cambodia Reform (CRP) and Candlelight (CP) – on August 31 to discuss their proposals for electoral reforms.
NEC deputy secretary-general Som Sorida said on August 29 that the body had received letters formally requesting the meeting from the parties on August 22.
NEC chairman Prach Chan gave approval for the meeting and assigned Sorida, secretary-general Tep Nytha, senior member Hang Puthea, as well as legal and technical services director Top Rithy and his deputy Ke Rithy to attend the meeting.
Chan emphasised that this was simply a meeting to hear reform proposals and discuss them with the party representatives, but as far as enacting the reforms goes, NEC is limited in its power to make changes to any aspect of elections that has its basis in Cambodian law rather than in one of its discretionary rules.
He added that under the Constitution, NEC is responsible for organising and managing elections but must adhere to the election law and the Constitution. And if the desired reforms conflict with what is stipulated by the laws, then only the National Assembly (NA) has the power to grant their request for amendment.
“NEC must respect and enforce the election law and any proposal contrary to the law would be unacceptable. But NEC will examine their proposals and consider any of the reforms that are in line with the Constitution and the electoral law in force,” he added.
CRP founder Ou Chanrath said on August 29 that the representatives of the four parties had met on August 28 to discuss election-related problems ahead of their meeting with NEC, and that their goal is to get NEC to do a better job of enforcing the law correctly after having identified some loopholes in NEC’s procedures.
He added that NEC is able to make some revisions to procedures they will propose, such as the timeframe to check voter lists and registration, details regarding the deployment of election observers to polling places and vote counting in full view of the public instead of “behind closed doors”.
“We just want some procedures to be revised and we’ve tried to lobby the NA or engage in debate with them on changes to some laws. However, the NA refused to meet with the parties that do not hold seats there and even claimed there were no internal rules or procedures for allowing members to meet with parties outside of the government,” he said.
Chanrath, who is formerly a lawmaker from the Supreme Court-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), said he regarded their refusal as unreasonable, farcical and unacceptable because there are no rules restricting NA members from having meetings with people outside of the government, whether it is a political party or their constituents.
NA spokesman Leng Peng Long stressed that the NA has no procedures for meetings with political parties that do not hold seats in the NA, so a meeting with them would not accomplish anything.
“Legally, we can’t meet with them officially. And if we did, it could just lead to nonsense interpretations of the results and encourage similar bad practices to develop later,” he said on August 29.
