Cambodia to bar anyone who doesn’t vote from running as candidates in future elections

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in office since 1985, said the change was needed so that candidates show their civic responsibility

The bill, which is sure to pass into law, will prevent exiled opposition figures from ever running for election without any further action needed

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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, 70, an authoritarian ruler in a nominally democratic state, has been in power for 38 years. Photo: AP

Published: 10:01am, 14 Jun 2023Updated: 10:06am, 14 Jun 2023

Cambodia’s long-serving leader has said his government will amend the country’s election law to bar anyone who fails to vote from running as a candidate in future elections, in his latest move to marginalise his political foes.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in office since 1985, said the change is needed because candidates for public office need to show their civic responsibility. He said the amendment will be ready for approval by lawmakers before a July 23 general election. The bill’s passage is a certainty, since all members of the National Assembly are members of Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

Most prominent opposition members have been in self-imposed exile to avoid being jailed on various charges they say are trumped up and unfair, and the proposed amendment would keep them from running in future polls without any further action needed to bar them. Opposition figures still inside the country who failed to vote would face the same consequences.

The law would also discourage an election boycott by placing opposition figures who wished to contest future polls in the awkward position of appearing to be hypocrites if they called for people not to vote while they themselves cast ballots.

A session of Cambodia’s National Assembly in 2021. All members of the National Assembly are also members of Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party. Photo: Cambodia National Assembly Handout / AFP

Hun Sen’s announcement of the plan, made in a speech on Tuesday to garment factory workers on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh, came less than a month after the main opposition party was barred from taking part in the July polls because it did not provide all of the paperwork required for registering.

The Candlelight Party said it could not provide some required documentation to the National Election Committee because it had been seized in a police raid several years ago.