Junta-appointed Union Election Commission (UEC) chairman Thein Soe flew to Cambodia to observe the country’s national election on Sunday— a vote that was dismissed by the international community as neither free nor fair.
The former Major-General flew to Phnom Penh on Friday at the invitation of the Cambodia’s election commission to observe the election for the 7th National Assembly, according to junta media.
Thein Soe and his team visited the country to observe its election system, election procedures, voting and vote counting, the reports said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) has claimed a “landslide” victory in Sunday’s poll that excluded the only viable opposition party.
As the longest-serving elected leader in Asia, Hun Sen has been in power for nearly four decades. In January last year, he flew to Myanmar to meet junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, amid criticism of the first visit by a head of government since the army seized power from an elected government in 2021.
Hun Sen has himself been described as coup leader, after he seized power from his co-prime minister in 1997. He is notorious for crackdowns on political opponents, while CPP-affiliated groups in other countries, including Australia, have been accused of threatening and harassing Cambodian refugees and their children.
On Monday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said “the United States is troubled that the July 23 Cambodian national elections were neither free nor fair.”
Miller denounced that in the run-up to the election, “authorities engaged in a pattern of threats and harassment against the political opposition, media, and civil society that undermined the spirit of the country’s constitution and Cambodia’s international obligations. These actions denied the Cambodian people a voice and a choice in determining the future of their country.”
The only viable opposition party, the Candlelight Party, was disqualified from participating in the vote due to a technicality in May. Its application was rejected by the National Election Committee because a registration document was deemed not to be an original even though it was issued by the country’s Ministry of Interior.
Opposition supporters were arrested in the run-up to Sunday’s vote for allegedly encouraging the spoiling of ballot papers in protest of the one-horse election race. Internet service providers were also ordered to block access to the websites of several independent news and information outlets.
Boycotting and disrupting the poll was also criminalized.
Thein Soe, following his appointment as the chair of junta’s UEC, annulled the results of 2020 general election, in which the party of now jailed State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory, claiming the poll was “not free and fair” and “not in compliance with” the constitution and the law.
The former military advocate-general in Than Shwe’s regime also oversaw the 2010 vote, the first national election in Myanmar in decades. And he rigged the vote for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) formed by Than Shwe.
Thein Soe has also had major pro-democracy parties like National League for Democracy and Shan Nationalities League for Democracy dissolved. And proportional representation system will be introduced in the proposed vote to make sure it is a one-horse race for the military-backed USDP. His UEC also adopted a new election law that effectively disables smaller parties from participating in national elections.
Despite Min Aung Hlaing frequently talking about holding an election, and transferring power to the winning party, he has yet to announce the date for Election Day.
