PHNOM PENH: At the Toul Kork Primary School in Phnom Penh volunteers swept classrooms and laid out wooden desks on Saturday, transforming the rooms into polling stations a day ahead of a general election which Prime Minister Hun Sen is expected to comfortably win.
"I believe voters will come out to vote," Yos Vanthan, head of the school's election committee, told Reuters.
Hun Sen's critics have called for an election boycott, saying that without any real opposition to the government, the poll will be a sham.
Voting is not mandatory, but authorities have warned that anyone who boycotts the vote will be seen as a "traitor".
The National Election Committee is forecasting a turnout of around 60% of eligible voters. The lower the turnout, the more questions there will be about the legitimacy of the victory.
Hun Sen and his supporters appear determined not to lose face, and the threats and intimidation of voters have even reached beyond Cambodia’s borders, Asia Times reported this week.
Many of the estimated one million Cambodians working in Thailand are expected to rush home this weekend to cast their ballots. Many do not support the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), but are returning because of threats to their livelihoods, Asia Times said.
“We have been told that if we don’t go home to vote, the government will take our land and homes,” it quoted a Banteay Meanchey resident who works in a restaurant in Bangkok as saying.
“Officials from the CPP came to our village and told people that if all those working in Thailand did not return home to vote, the government would take their land.
“My family is terrified because me and my sister and brother work in Thailand and the money we make supports our family and helped buy them land to farm in Cambodia. We have to go back to vote.”
A group of Cambodian construction workers at a Bangkok building site had similar stories. They are angry not only at the threat of losing their land, but at having to spend their hard-earned money to return to Cambodia for only a few days.
“There have been threats on Facebook as well as CPP people going around my village, telling people they will not only lose their land, but will get no development like roads, electricity and water in the future if people do not all go to vote for the CPP,” said one worker who asked to use only his first name, Sophea.
Added another: “I will vote, but it won’t be for the CPP. They only care about getting rich and staying in power and they don’t care about our people.”
Nineteen political parties are running against the CPP but none are strongly critical of the prime minister or the government.
His main challenge, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which narrowly lost the last election in 2013, was dissolved by the Supreme Court last year and many of its lawmakers were banned from politics for five years.
The ruling was never in doubt -- the president of the Supreme Court is also an executive of the CPP.
Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who eventually defected from Pol Pot's murderous regime, has been in power for 33 years and is the world's longest serving prime minister.
Many CNRP leaders have fled abroad and are living in self-imposed exile and its leader, Kem Sokha, was jailed in September on treason charges, leaving Hun Sen, who has ruled for 33 years, with no significant opponent.
Some Western countries and the United Nations have questioned the credibility of the election because of the lack of any significant opposition. Rights groups have criticised restrictions placed on independent media and civil society.
Officials say they don't expect any violence on election day, but last week authorities put on a show of power, with police displaying anti-riot gear and assault rifles in the capital in a move meant to discourage any street protests.
Police on Saturday arrested four farmers and accused them of planting a grenade at a polling station in the country's northern Preah Vihear province, provincial police chief Ying Samnang said in police report. The device did not explode.
Dim Sovannarom, a spokesman for the National Election Committee, who inspected the Toul Kork Primary School in Boeung Kak 1 commune on Saturday, said the commission expects more than 60% of registered voters to cast their ballot.
Nearly 70% cast their ballot during the last general election said a construction worker who requested to use only his first name, Sophea in 2013.
"We expect more than 60% in the whole country," Dim Sovannarom told reporters, before unveiling grey metal polling boxes donated by the Japanese government.
But some Cambodians see no point in voting.
"Why should I vote? It makes no difference," said an airport taxi driver from the southwestern province of Takeo. He declined to be named for fear of repercussions.
Mu Sochua, CNRP deputy president, said any country that does not denounce the election cannot call itself democratic.
“Any country supporting, or that is hesitant to denounce the election as a sham, should not call itself on the side of democracy,” Mu Sochua told Reuters.
Critics, including exiled opposition members, have called for targeted sanctions against Hun Sen's government and its allies following his pre-election crackdown.
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a long-awaited Cambodia Democracy Act, paving the way for sanctions to be imposed against Hun Sen's inner circle.
This week Japan said it would not send observers to the election despite doing so in numerous elections in the past.
