Majority for Cambodia PM
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) has won an overall majority of the popular vote in the country’s general election.
The Cambodian electoral commission said that Hun Sen’s party received 2.45 million votes in last month’s poll – just over 40% of the vote.
However the major upset was the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) polling 1.3 million votes and overtaking the royalist Funcinpec as the main opposition party in Cambodia.
No party managed to gain the required two-thirds of votes needed to control Cambodia’s national assembly.
And under Cambodia’s complex proportional representation system, the votes must be translated into the number of seats that each party will be allocated in the 123-member National Assembly before there is any formal declaration of the winner.
A spokesman for the electoral commission said the seat allocation will probably announced between 14 August and 6 September, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Alliances needed?
Hun Sen has vowed to stay in power even if he cannot find coalition partners to govern with.
The BBC’s Tony Cheng says that negotiations are most likely under way to forge alliances needed.
Sam Rainsy has previously said that he would never join a government with Hun Sen.
Although there is a possibility his party may join Funcinpec, previous attempts have ended acrimoniously, our correspondent adds.
Both opposition parties expressed dissatisfaction with the way the poll was conducted, but say they will make official legal challenges before calling for street protests.
Uncertainty in Cambodia’s last general election in 1998 led to street protests and violence in which several people were killed.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/3134081.stm
Published: 2003/08/08 03:34:12 GMT
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