With the Cambodian national assembly elections fast approaching on Jul. 28, local and international organisations are expressing concerns about the fairness and transparency of the electoral system.

According to an audit of the Cambodian voter registry conducted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a U.S. government-funded entity, almost 11 percent of eligible citizens wrongly believe themselves to be registered to vote.“Cambodia should rise above a mechanical application of democracy ." -- U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia Surya P. Subedi

“These citizens will show up to the polling stations on election day and not be able to vote,” Peter Manikas, NDI’s regional director for Asia, told IPS. “Further, more than 10 percent of the names listed on the voters’ list are invalid, of unknown people, presenting an opportunity for fraud on election day.”

The results of the audit haven’t been accepted by the Cambodian National Election Committee (NEC), which maintains that the number of names on the voter registry represents 101.7 percent of the eligible population, even more than the actual number of eligible citizens, in stark contrast with NDI’s findings that only show an 82.9 percent registration rate.

The extra names in the NEC registry data “could be duplicates or could be those of unknown/non-existent people,” Manikas told IPS.

Irregularities in the voter registry are also cited in a report compiled by the Phnom Penh-based Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL) just after the last commune council elections in June 2012, as well as in the last report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Surya P. Subedi, dated July 2012.

Some of Subedi’s recommendations to the Cambodian government “could have been implemented within a short period of time without requiring many additional resources if there had been the political will to do so,” he told IPS.

The present electoral system requires every eligible citizen to register in order to vote, which can only be done in September and October, nine months before the election, and in the place of one’s own residency. This will potentially disenfranchise those who change their residency within nine months of the polls, as well as the homeless and evicted, who are unable to show proof of residency.

A “dire need for electoral reform” in the longer term is called for in NDI’s report. Subedi has made similar recommendations, and hopes for a more independent NEC, composed of neutral and high-level personalities able to represent all political parties in a balanced way.

A democracy trapped in patronage networks

Electoral malpractice, such as vote buying, use of state resources for political campaigns, threats and intimidation of some candidates and unequal access to media for all parties have been monitored over the years by organisations like COMFREL.

According to Trude Jacobsen, assistant director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, Cambodian political culture is deeply informed by patron-client networks, in which votes are given in exchange for protection and personal favours.

“People would vote according to whoever is at the top of their [patronage network], it has nothing to do with what they actually think about elections,” she told IPS.

“No one would do anything to change the status quo at the bottom because it is simply not in their best interest,” she said, as they rely on political patronage connections for daily needs, such as having a job or sending their children to school.

Change can only come from the future generation of political leaders who are being exposed to alternative models outside Cambodia and will hopefully be “willing to sacrifice their own self-interest for the greater good”, said Jacobsen.

Another reason for concern is the decreasing voter turnout in the last years, which could be a sign of voters’ frustration with the current electoral system.

However, according to NDI, 92.8 percent of eligible citizens plan to vote on Jul. 28, which is a notably high percentage in a country in which voting is not compulsory.

Several rallies organised by opposition parties in the last months have gathered crowds of thousands, but according to Jacobsen, participants are not all authentic political supporters. Some of them are paid to attend, a practice widely used by both governing and opposition parties.

Following the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, which gave the U.N. the responsibility to supervise peacebuilding operations and the first democratic elections, the country embarked on a democratisation process and went seven times to the polls, for the national assembly (1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008) and commune council elections (2002, 2007 and 2012).

July’s elections will renew for another five-year term the 123 seats of the national assembly, which is the lower house of the Cambodian parliament, and the winning party will be assigned the task of forming a new government.

The current ruling coalition of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the royalist party FUNCINPEC is expected to remain in power, defeating the opposition’s Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) and extending for another five years the already 28-year-long tenure of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Land has become a pivotal issue, in a country where 80 percent of the population is involved in subsistence farming but 20 percent of agricultural families are landless, due in part to the government’s scheme of leasing millions of hectares of agricultural land to mammoth multinational corporations.

“Cambodia should rise above a mechanical application of democracy … ,” said Subedi in his report, “and implement the fundamental principles and spirit behind the notion of the rule of law.”

“The country has come a long way since the Paris Peace Accords, but it still has some way to go to meet the international standards in a number of areas including the holding of transparent, free and fair elections,” he told IPS.

According to Jacobsen, “The mistake that was made was expecting people to be able to come out of a 20-year civil conflict and then adapt to Western models immediately,” with the result that the existing conception of political power as a patron-client relationship survived under the surface.

“It’s not going to be an immediate change,” she added, “and certainly not for this election.”

At most voter registration centres in Zimbabwe there are long queues and the process to register a tedious one. Most civil society organisations believe that this is a deliberate attempt by President Robert Mugabe’s supporters to frustrate people and prevent them from registering. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

By Michelle Chifamba
HARARE, Jul 6 2013 (IPS)

Like many other aspiring voters, Emilia Magirazi, 27, braved a chilly winter’s morning as she waited patiently to register as a voter in the slow-moving queue at Kuwadzana 8 Primary School in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

Zimbabwe’s second round of voter registration commenced on Jun. 19 and is expected to end on Tuesday Jul. 9, with the presidential elections set for Jul. 31. A first round took place over 20 days in April and May.

But people like Magirazi are finding it hard to put their names down on Zimbabwe’s electoral role. This is because she is a foreign national: Magirazi was born in Zambia, of Zimbabwean parents.

“I arrived here before the break of dawn, and by lunch time I eventually got service from the officials. But they told me that I am an alien and not eligible to register. I was referred to the army barracks or the police for clearance of any criminal offences,” Magirazi told IPS.

While the 12th amendment of Zimbabawe’s Citizenship Act 2011 outlaws dual citizenship, the country’s new constitution, which was enacted in May after the first round of voter registration, recognises those born abroad of Zimbabwean parents to be citizens. It also recognises all people born in this southern African nation, regardless of their parents’ citizenship, as Zimbabweans.

But like Magirazi, scores of other foreign nationals have been denied the right to register as voters, despite the stipulations in the new constitution.

According to the Harare office of the International Organization for Migration, between 500,000 nd four million Zimbabweans are living abroad. Most fled Zimbabwe for economic reasons as between 2003 and 2009 the country had one of the worst rates of hyperinflation in the world.

With the word “alien” inscribed on her national identity document (ID), Magirazi was referred to the Registrar General’s office to apply for a new one. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has stipulated that persons previously categorised as foreign nationals should apply for citizenship and national ID cards that reflect this changed status in order to vote.

But long queues and cumbersome demands have become the order of the day at the Registrar General’s office. Marshal Bachi, 35, of Dzivarasekwa in Harare, said he had to sleep at the Registrar General’s offices when he went to obtain a new ID as his previous one stated that he was a foreign national.

“They refused to process my national ID because my birth certificate was soiled and they said that I should get a new one … Due to this cumbersome process, I might not be able to get a new ID to register as a voter before the process ends,” Bachi told IPS.

The Election Resource Centre (ERC), a local NGO, believes that the Registrar General’s office is deliberately trying to frustrate first-time voters in order to prevent them from voting.

“It seems to be happening to a lot of prospective voters. Foreign nationals will not be able to vote in the next election. For the first time they were able to enjoy being citizens under the new constitution, but they will not be able to exercise their right under prevailing conditions.

“The stipulations by the electoral commission are contradictory to what is happening on the ground. A number of people are being denied the right to claim their citizenship at the Registrar General’s office despite the ZEC’s stipulations that those formerly-categorised as ‘aliens’ can apply for new IDs,” ERC director, Tawanda Chimhinhi, told IPS.

Harare-based social commentator Tawanda Mukurunge agreed.

“Despite the fact that the elections are only three weeks away, there has been no serious attempt by the ZEC to educate Zimbabweans on the impending vote and their right to vote. The information blackout by the ZEC is a deliberate ploy meant to keep unsuspecting citizens in the dark. The possibility of a free and fair election will remain a pipe dream unless these issues are addressed,” he told IPS.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s chief of staff, Ian Makone, told IPS that many more people were being turned away from registering to vote.

“More than 50 people failed to register on the grounds that they were aliens and were sent back home, while the elderly who did not have IDs were told to get clearance from KG ‘6’ an army headquarter where national documents such as passports are processed. Cabinet must therefore revisit this issue because this is taking place all over the country,” he said.

However, on Thursday Jul. 4, the Zimbabwe Constitutional Court overturned appeals to delay the elections. Many here say that the haste with which President Robert Mugabe set the election date has not allowed for sufficient time to reform the country’s security forces. In previous elections, state security have been accused of instigating violence against those opposed to Mugabe.

Civil society groups have said that holding the elections on Jul. 31 would likely incite fear and possibly result in an unfair election.

Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of NGOs monitoring the elections, said that the nature of the voter-registration process, the atmosphere associated with it, and the disruption and intimidation of civil society were an attempt by Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front to instigate violence at the polls in order to reclaim its political legitimacy. Mugabe has been in power for 33 years in a reign marred by corruption, violence and political oppression.

The Youth Agenda Trust, a youth networking organisation, added that the process had been deliberately designed to deny bona fide citizens their right to vote.

“The cumbersome processing of ‘aliens’ is a direct violation of the rights of the people of Zimbabwe and a breach of the constitutional right to vote as stipulated in the new constitution. The time that has also been allocated to register is not enough as most people have either failed to cope with the long and winding queues and or have not had time to visit the centres in the short period due to other competing interests,” director of Youth Agenda Trust, Fortune Nyamande, told IPS.