Dissenting voters discover ways to express 'none of the above' in Cambodia

After Sunday’s general election, which was roundly condemned as a sham by Western governments and human rights groups, Cambodia is all but officially a one-party state. The Cambodian People’s Party of Hun Sen, the longtime prime minister, claims it captured every one of the 125 seats in Parliament.

But the second-largest number of votes went to a surprising beneficiary: no one. Around 600,000 Cambodian voters, or 8.6 percent of the electorate, cast inadmissible ballots, according to the National Election Committee.

During the last general election in 2013, which the opposition nearly won, only 108,085 invalid ballots were recorded.

The surprisingly high number of invalid ballots hinted at quiet defiance from an electorate cowed into voting, but distressed by the kneecapping of democracy in Cambodia.

Exiled leaders of the opposition had called for a boycott of the poll. But the authorities spread the word, in villages and urban areas alike, that the state would be watching to see whether voters had fulfilled their duty. On the eve of the election, Hun Sen warned that those who dared to skip the voting were “traitors.”

At some garment factories in Phnom Penh, the capital, workers — who had flocked to the opposition in 2013 — were warned not to return to the factory line unless their fingers were inked to prove they had voted. The National Election Committee, which is not an independent entity, reported that 82.89 percent of registered voters had shown up at polling stations, a higher turnout than in 2013.

A 40-year-old grocer named Pheap, from Sarikakeo commune in Kandal province, said he had spoiled his ballot by blacking out the name of the governing party. He said the election was not fair because of the absence of the main opposition party. Like other voters interviewed, he gave only his first name because he was worried about the consequences of his dissent.

On Tuesday morning, Hun Sen — who has maintained his grip on power for 33 years with a potent mix of military power, political guile and old-school thuggery — took to Facebook to deem the polls free and fair. The prime minister said there had been no pressure on voters to choose the Cambodian People’s Party.

“The absolute majority of people support democratic, liberal and multiparty elections, which is the biggest wish of the Cambodian people,” Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page.

But Sunday’s electoral exercise can hardly be described as a display of multiparty democracy.

The 19 other parties that appeared on the ballot were tiny entities with little name recognition. Cambodians call them “firefly” parties, twinkling briefly during the electoral season to give a veneer of validity to the proceedings.

Rights groups, the United Nations and Western governments said the election had been compromised before a single ballot was cast. In November, the main opposition force, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was ordered dissolved by the nation’s highest court. Its leader, Kem Sokha, is in jail, accused of plotting to overthrow the government with U.S. support.

Independent local media outlets have been forced into silence. Western aid groups that had spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to nurture Cambodia’s fledgling democracy have been kicked out of the country.

Meanwhile, China, itself a flourishing one-party state, has stepped in with aid and investment to replace funds withheld by Western governments. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, which sent observers to Cambodia even as Western monitors stayed away for fear of legitimizing the polls, deemed the elections a success.

As Hun Sen and his government have unleashed a crackdown on dissent over the past year, Western governments have begun imposing economic sanctions on those they consider responsible for the dismantling of democracy. The United States is expected to ramp up efforts to tighten visa restrictions on antidemocratic forces in Cambodia, including on members of Hun Sen’s family.

“The flawed elections, which excluded the country’s principal opposition party, represent the most significant setback yet to the democratic system enshrined in Cambodia’s constitution,” said the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Official election results are not expected for days.

In Phnom Penh, where the Cambodia National Rescue Party did well in last year’s commune-level elections, 11.6 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday were declared invalid.

Holding up his inked finger, a restaurant worker named Chheang said he had scrawled a big X over his ballot. The party he wanted to vote for, he said, was not on it.

Sok Eysan, the spokesman for Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, said on Tuesday that the governing party’s domination of the elections could be credited to its success in shepherding the country out of its genocidal, war-torn past.

“If we didn’t have good policies, we wouldn’t have gotten a landslide victory,” he said, dismissing concerns about the high number of spoiled votes and the absence of the main opposition party.

“We didn’t grab votes from others,” Sok Eysan added. “People gave them to us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.