LTO Cambodia: Election Day, morning

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Election Day, morning

Inked.

Election day in Cambodia, Prey Veng province, July 28, 2013

Here’s a quick dump of a few photos from polling stations I visited this morning (before 11AM.) I visited about 17 polling stations at 8 different locations in Prey Veng province, most in the countryside outside the city.

Some stray notes:

I noticed that there are polling station staff assigned to assist people locate their names on the posted registration lists. There is a lot of lingering at the registration lists as people search for their names.

Have seen a lot of ICE forms being used as ID, especially at polling stations in the countryside away from the city. Most, but not all, were young people. I spoke to 6 or 7 ICE form holders about it. All but one said that they have only a family book as ID but there is only one family book for the whole family, yet there are several people of voting age in their family. So rather than pass the family book around between everybody, they got the ICE forms to have individual IDs for voting.

As of 11AM more than half of the polling stations I have visited have had around 30% turnout. Most of these stations have been in the countryside and the polling staff speculates that the farmers are working in the fields in the morning and may come to vote in the afternoon.

I have seen multiple party observers at every polling station and non-party observers (COMFREL, Transparency International, unidentified non-party) at about 70% of the visited stations.

One observer told me that as soon as he voted he rushed straight home to try to wash off the ink using techniques he read about on Facebook yesterday. Displaying his still stained finger he said, “It didn’t work.”

Polling station staff sealing the ballot box before polling opens.

People searching for their names on posted registration lists outside the polling station.

Countryside polling station in school building. Late morning, very few voters.

Showing ID and recieving ballot.

Voting.

Getting inked.

Domestic observers.

This lady stopped me and insisted I take her photo, saying "I am old and I cannot do anything, but I can do this."

1 comment:

UnknownJuly 28, 2013 at 4:04 PM
Saw a number of voters easily remove the ink in Phnom Penh.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.