THE Ministry of Interior shall have virtually sole responsibility for organizing,
controlling and monitoring next year's scheduled commune elections, according to
a draft law.
The March 1996 draft - written by the ministry but yet to be approved by co-Ministers
Sar Kheng and You Hockry - provides for no independent electoral bodies.
It envisages a National Electoral Commission, headed by the Ministers, comprised
of representatives of the ministry and "relevant units" or "various
quarters", according to different English translations given the Post.
It does not directly provide for representatives of NGOs, political parties or independent
advisers.
The commission's duties will include coordinating the elections, training electoral
officers, resolving disputes and monitoring the ballot to ensure "freedom, fairness,
justice and democratic conditions."
The national commission shall appoint provincial/municipal electoral commissions
- which will in turn set up local electoral commission offices - as well as provincial/municipal
electoral monitoring commissions.
Local offices will be in charge of collecting and counting votes. The counting can
be witnessed by a representative of each candidate and by national and international
NGOs.
Existing commune chiefs - most of whom were appointed by the former communist regime
run by the predecessor to the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) - will establish voter
lists and propose polling station sites.
The law - which will for the first time allow Cambodians to elect their chiefs in
1,500 rural communes and urban sangkats - is widely expected to be the model for
another law covering the 1998 national elections. In March, co-Minister of Interior
Sar Kheng said the ministry's program for the national elections would be similar
to the commune preparations.
The draft commune law says Khmer citizens - the definition of a Khmer citizen is
yet to be made in another law - over the age of 18 can vote, but must have lived
in their commune for at least a year.
Election candidates must be aged at least 25 and have lived in the same commune for
five years or more. There is no requirement that candidates, who will be elected
under a simple majority system, belong to a political party.
To be eligible to stand, candidates must submit a list of supporters totaling at
least 5 percent of their commune's voting population.
People barred from being candidates include public servants removed from their jobs
for disciplinary reasons in the past five years.
Candidates who became naturalized citizens less than 10 years ago, and those who
"reclaimed" their nationality less than five years ago, are also prohibited.
There is no definition of what reclaiming citizenship means or, for example, whether
the category would apply to Cambodians who fled the country during the Vietnamese
occupation.
Ministry of Interior officials have denied that the prohibitions are aimed at Funcinpec
politicians and others such as Sam Rainsy of the Khmer Nation Party, but several
NGO observers called for the clauses to be clarified or removed.
One foreign lawyer questioned the lack of independence in the election organization,
with the Ministry of Interior and existing commune officials dominating the process.
For instance, the law provides for complaints about people left off voter or candidate
lists to be made to commune or district officials, or the provincial electoral commissions.
If unresolved, the National Electoral Commission can rule on the complaints.
The law envisages a 10-day election campaign period, and calls for newspapers and
provincial radio and television stations to allocate equal coverage to candidates.
Anyone who uses coercion or "tricks" to solicits votes can go to jail for
two years, and people who commit crimes while campaigning can be charged under Cambodia's
criminal law.
One provision in the law touches on the thorny issue of whether Cambodian residents
of Vietnamese or other foreign ancestry will be deemed eligible to vote. It says
that the Ministry of Interior can directly appoint commune chiefs in communes where
three-fifths of the population do not have Khmer nationality.
A final draft of the law is expected to be approved by the Ministers next month,
before going to the Council of Ministers and eventually the National Assembly.
