Cambodia elections: Voting ends, PM Hun Sen likely to emerge victorious

Voting in Cambodia’s national election has completed, and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) is poised to win easily in what opponents have called the country’s least free and fair election in decades, according to Al Jazeera.

At 7 a.m. Sunday (00:00 GMT), around 9.7 million of the country’s 16 million registered voters began casting ballots. According to Al Jazeera, 17 minor parties are running in the election alongside the incumbent and long-reigning CPP, but none of them have the popular support to truly challenge Hun Sen’s decades of power.

Hun Sen, Asia’s longest-serving elected leader, has entrenched power in Cambodia during the last 38 years. This election triumph is intended to pave the way for the transfer of power to his son, Hun Manet, the commander of the Cambodian army, according to the article.

His party is projected to retain all 125 seats in the country’s legislature. The sole true opposition rival, the Candlelight Party, was prohibited from voting due to a registration error in May.

Critics slammed this as yet another example of Hun Sen’s flattening of political engagement in the country.

According to Al Jazeera, Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany, voted immediately after polls opened on Sunday morning in Takhmau, south of the city, where one of the prime minister’s palaces is located.