Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...

is a one-party dominant state with the Cambodian People's Party in power. Cambodia's legislature is chosen through a national

election An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...

. The

general election A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from By-election, by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. Gener ...

is held every five years in the fourth Sunday of July. The

Parliament of Cambodia In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. ...

has two chambers. The

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

( ) has 125 members, each elected for a five-year term by

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...

. The

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

( ) has 62 members, mostly indirectly elected. Since the signing of the

1991 Paris Peace Accords The Paris Peace Agreements (; ), officially the Comprehensive Cambodian Peace Agreements, was signed on 23 October 1991 and marked the official end of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War and the Third Indochina War. The agreement led to the deploym ...

ending decades of civil wars and foreign occupation, and with the final elimination in 1998 of armed insurgency groups inside the country, six national elections have taken place in Cambodia. The first national elections were administered by United Nations Transitional Authority for Cambodia (

UNTAC The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia in 1992–93 formed following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords. This was the first occasion in which the UN List of territories ...

) in July 1993, the first commune-level election was held in February 2002 and the Cambodian senate was elected for the first time by the elected commune council officials in January 2006. Three main political parties have dominated Cambodian politics over the last decade: the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (

FUNCINPEC The National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia, commonly referred to as FUNCINPEC, is a royalist political party in Cambodia. Founded in 1981 by Norodom Sihanouk, it began as a resistance movement again ...

) and, more recently, the

Cambodia National Rescue Party The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP; , UNGEGN: , ALA-LC: ) was a major political party in Cambodia. It was founded in 2012 as a merger between the Sam Rainsy Party and Human Rights Party. The party believed in the strengthening of freedo ...

(CNRP; party banned in 2017). Although the CPP dominated the elections held on July 27, 2003, it did not win the two-thirds majority required under the constitution to form a government on its own. A new government was formed on July 15, 2004, after protracted negotiations between the CPP and FUNCINPEC on forming a

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

.Country Assessment Strategy (CAS) for the Kingdom of Cambodia

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

, April 18, 2005. In early 2006 the CPP further consolidated its hold on power by passing an amendment to the constitution through Parliament that will allow for a 50% plus one majority in the National Assembly to form a government (instead of the two-thirds majority), thereby reducing its future reliance on FUNCINPEC or another coalition partner.

Latest election

Result in history

1955 Cambodian general election

1972 Cambodian general election

1976 Cambodian general election

1981 Cambodian general election

1993 Cambodian general election

Elections (since 1993)

General election

Communal elections

Senate election

References

External links

National Election Committee (NEC)

Adam Carr's Election Archive

Cambodia Development Resource Institute
(CDRI) - Development policy research institute
Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia
(COMFREL) - NGO
Coalition for Free and Fair Elections
(COFFEL) - NGO {{Asia topic, Elections in