Few voters ever meet their local MPs: report

Wednesday, 27 January 2010
By Kim Yuthana
The Phnom Penh Post

A NEW report by the election watchdog group COMFREL says that less than 4 percent of Cambodian voters have any direct contact with their local parliamentarians.

The report, issued Tuesday during a workshop in Phnom Penh, found that of 8,678 voters surveyed, only 3.5 percent had directly communicated with their representatives.

Koul Panha (picture), executive director of COMFREL, cited enormous workloads placed on politicians and a failure by political parties to communicate effectively with voters as the chief obstacles to a closer relationship between parliamentarians and their constituents.

Political parties “fail to introduce their parliamentarians to residents, and residents are not able to contact their offices”, Koul Panha said.

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