Politics are a funny thing. People have such strong opinions, even over here where the ruling party has stayed in power for decades.
Recently there was an election here. The results were highly debated, since the ruling party is known for pulling nasty tricks. In the end, they won, yet again. The official (UN sanctioned) tally was just reported. Hopefully now things will settle back to normal, well- a Cambodian normal.
My friend, Heather Korm, said it best, so I'll just quote her.
"Following the announcement of the official results this morning (which saw no change – the CPP won 68 seats and the CNRP 55), the CNRP have announced three days of protests on the 15th, 16th and 17th of September. It’s unclear at the moment whether these will be three separate protests or a 72 hour demonstration. One quote from the CNRP press release says that the protests “could take a variety of forms, the form of a meeting, the form of a sit-in or the form of marches.” So another round of staying at home with a store full of food, hoping nothing happens.
The roads around Hun Sen’s house [the Prime Minister] remain closed off and police presence remains high. But hopefully we now have a week’s grace until things have the potential to go crazy again, unless people start to get bored of the game and take matters into their own hands.
In related news, three monks were beaten by their pagoda superiors for joining the protests, whilst several of Hun Sen’s sons managed to secure seats in parliament despite losing according to the preliminary results."
