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EU Suspends Funding for Cambodian Election

by Reuters

   PHNOM PENH --

   The European Union has suspended funding for Cambodia's 2018 general
   election because the vote cannot be credible after the dissolution of
   the main opposition party, according to a letter sent to the national
   election committee on Tuesday.

   The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved by the
   country's highest court last month at the request of the government of
   Prime Minister Hun Sen after the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha
   for alleged treason.

   "An electoral process from which the main opposition party has been
   arbitrarily excluded cannot be seen as legitimate," read the Dec. 12
   letter reviewed by Reuters. "Under these circumstances, the European
   Union does not believe there is a possibility of a credible electoral
   process."

   The EU and Japan are the biggest donors to Cambodia's election
   commission. Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the government, said it was
   able to hold the election with its own money.

   "This is their will ... we have our own money," Phay Siphan told
   Reuters on Tuesday.

   The United States last month said it would suspend funding for the
   election. It later said it would impose visa sanctions for people
   involved in the governments' actions to undermine democracy.

   A crackdown by the ruling party has seen senior members of the
   opposition targeted in recent months. Kem Sokha, leader of the CNRP,
   was arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with
   U.S. help.

   He has rejected the accusation as a political ploy.

   The dissolution of the CNRP has been condemned by some Western
   countries as the most serious blow to democracy since an international
   peace deal and U.N.-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of
   war and a Khmer Rouge genocide that killed at least 1.8 million
   Cambodians in the 1970s.

   The EU in October warned Cambodia that it could face EU action over
   duty-free access it enjoys under a deal for some of the world's poorest
   countries if the human rights situation in the country deteriorates
   further.