No surprises as ruling party dominates National Assembly

THE National Election Committee (NEC) released the final results of the 2008 parliamentary election ahead of schedule Tuesday, confirming provisional results that showed a landslide win for the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

According to the results, the CPP won 90 of the National Assembly's 123 seats, with the Sam Rainsy Party claiming 26 seats, Kem Sokha's Human Rights Party three, and the royalist Funcinpec and Norodom Ranariddh Party two each.

The results also show women are set to occupy 20 seats going into the fourth mandate.

"We have announced the official results early because the Constitutional Council has been working hard to resolve all the complaints of electoral irregularities," said NEC Secretary General Tep Nytha, adding that the organisation of the election had been a resounding success.

"We have completed our work very successfully and complied with the law. The next step will be to send the results to King Norodom Sihamoni and other government institutions," he said.

Opposition leaders remained steadfast in their rejection of the results, maintaining allegations that voter lists were deliberately distorted in the CPP's favour.

"We do not accept these results. We believe [they] do not reflect the will of the people, and we have already provided evidence that a million people were cheated out of their votes on Election Day," said SRP spokesman Son Chhay.

He added the party president, Sam Rainsy, would take the party's allegations further, requesting an audience with the King and travelling to Europe to argue his case to the international diplomatic community.

"Hopefully there will be some international mechanism to prevent this sort of cheating from happening again," Son Chhay said. "Cambodia is heading towards authoritarianism."

But Tep Nytha said the continuing opposition complaints would not affect the poll results. "I think that even if the opposition makes complaints to the international community, it will not affect the result," he said. "We are thinking only of the law in Cambodia."