Shortly after the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won the July elections by a landslide, a 51-year-old farmer named Cheam Ny stood in protest at the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) Headquarters. His goal: the end of corruption in Cambodia.
Like many Cambodians that day, he complained that the SRP lost seats in the National Assembly because of rampant election fraud. He cited anecdotal evidence consisting of the names of voters that had allegedly been deleted from rolls, and the falsification of documents allowing unregistered CPP supporters to vote.
To Cheam Ny, the election fraud was part and parcel of a much larger and endemic culture of corruption — a culture that seems unlikely to change without a change in the government itself. “The CPP officials have committed corruption so they can’t eliminate corruption,” argues Ny, who is calling for a reelection to right the wrongs of the past.