The Electoral Commission announced the official results late on Wednesday that showed that all seats in the National Assembly went to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party, which received 76.78 per cent of the votes, a media house reported.”(The result) clearly shows that the people have given confidence to the correct leadership of the CPP and that they have decided to choose peace, development and democracy for the whole country,” Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page.
The other 19 candidates secured not more than six per cent of the votes nor managed to secure a seat in Parliament.The former opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) will not be in the new National Assembly either, as it was banned ahead of the polls by the Supreme Court.
It had managed to snatch 44 per cent of the votes in the 2013 general elections.
The CNRP called to boycott elections after the judicial persecutions in 2017 that led to the imprisonment of its leader and prompted around 100 members of the party to go into exile the finally led to its dissolution.Several countries, including the US and various members of the European Union, questioned the legitimacy of the Cambodian elections.
The US State Department on Wednesday expanded its visa restrictions on Cambodia following the poll results.
It said that since the US has characterised the election as “flawed and neither free nor fair” the restrictions first applied in December 2017 were further expanded.
