Election fever strikes Cambodia a month before polls

 Agence France-Presse
Cambodia on Thursday officially started campaigning for next month's general election, expected to be won by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen who is seeking to extend his 28-year grip on the country.

Thousands of supporters from several political parties took to Phnom Penh's streets in colourful rival rallies, as cars and motorcycles adorned with banners roared through the capital.

The rallies, held one month ahead of July 28 polls, mark the official start of election season in the kingdom.

While all political parties are free to canvass voters and hold public events, observers say there is little chance of unseating the incumbent Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which won the last two polls by a landslide despite allegations of fraud and election irregularities.

Hun Sen and other CPP leaders marked the start of campaigning by receiving a blessing from the country's top Buddhist monks in front of tens of thousands of supporters.

"Making a right decision will bring more success, but a wrong decision will be a setback and a huge danger for the nation," Heng Samrin, CPP honorary president, told the rally.

A CPP victory will prevent the return of a genocidal regime similar to the Khmer Rouge of the late 1970s, he added, alluding to allegations by his party that the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) would lurch the nation towards conflict.

Hun Sen has run Cambodia for 28 years, making him Southeast Asia's longest-serving leader beside the sultan of Brunei.

His government is regularly accused of suppressing political freedoms and muzzling activists.

But he has also steered the impoverished country out of the ashes of civil war and overseen a growing economy through development, tourism, and garment exports.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, his main challenger, is barred from running in the polls due to a string of convictions that the opposition says are politically motivated.

Rainsy, who lives in exile in France to avoid prison, faces 11 years in jail if he returns, after he was convicted in absentia for charges that included publishing a "false map" of the border with Vietnam.

The idiosyncratic Hun Sen last month said he would try stay in power for more than a decade until when he is 74. He previously vowed to hold office until he reaches 90.

Kem Sokha, acting president of CNRP, told supporters that the CNRP would tackle endemic corruption.

"For 30 years under the leadership by this government, there is rampant corruption from top to bottom, systematic corruption," he told his cheering supporters.

"A vote for the CNRP will boost the standard of living for Cambodian people.. something that the ruling party has not achieved in the last 30 years," he added.

Kem Sokha is facing a defamation lawsuit filed by survivors of the Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng torture prison, after he allegedly said the jail was a Vietnamese fabrication.

The CNRP have denounced the move as the latest in a series of politically motivated smears aimed at the opposition party ahead of the election.

There are eight parties competing for 123 parliamentary seats in the July 28 poll.

Some 9.6 million people are registered to vote under the eyes of more than 7,700 domestic and international observers.

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