Cambodia goes to polls but results all-but-certain

• Hun Sen has been in office for 28 years


• The three main parties teamed up, and hoped for strength in numbers


• More than 9 million people were eligible to vote


• Opposition parties alleged widespread irregularities

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) — Cambodians went to the polls Sunday for an election whose outcome is all but certain: five more years in power for long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Hun Sen has been in office for 28 years. And so confident was he of victory, he didn’t bother campaigning ahead of the elections.

Still, opposition groups were energized.

The three main parties teamed up, and hoped for strength in numbers: Enough votes to take over control from the ruling party.

More than 9 million people were eligible to vote.

The excitement bubbled over Friday when opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned home from exile in France.

He left in 2009 to avoid prison on charges of spreading disinformation — charges many considered politically motivated. International pressure led to him receiving a royal pardon last week. But he arrived too late to run for office.

On election day, opposition parties alleged that widespread irregularities had marred the balloting.

At a local high school in Phnom Penh, the names of voters registered with the opposition parties were either missing or misspelled — meaning they couldn’t vote.

The national election committee said it worked hard to ensure the election was far.

“In preparing for the election this year, we started in the middle of 2012,” said Tep Nytha, the secretary general of the committee, ahead of the balloting.

Opposition supporters told CNN that if they end up losing the election due to voter fraud, they will appeal the results — but do so in a peaceful way.

They will take their grievance to the United Nations, they said, rather than to the streets.

Final results are expected to be announced later Sunday.

CNN.com Recently Published/Updated

Cambodia goes to polls but results all-but-certain

"Looted" art returned to Cambodia

11 June 2013 Last updated at 11:17 ET

Cambodian officials hailed the return of the sandstone sculptures as “historic”

Two 10th Century Khmer statues, believed to have been looted from a temple in Cambodia decades ago, have been sent back from the United States.

The life-size sculptures, known as the “kneeling attendants”, had been displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly 20 years.

The museum pledged to return the artefacts after evidence suggested they had been illegally exported.

A ceremony was held at Phnom Penh airport to welcome them back.

Cambodian officials hailed the return journey of the sandstone sculptures as a “historic” moment for the country.

Buddhist monks chanted blessings during the ceremony, which was attended by government officials as well as executives from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The statues are believed to have been stolen from the Koh Ker temple 80km (50 miles) north-east of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple complex in the early 1970s at the height of the country’s civil war.

The museum announced its decision to return the statues in May after extensive consultations with the Cambodian authorities.

“The museum is committed to applying rigorous provenance standards not only to new acquisitions, but to the study of works long in its collections in an ongoing effort to learn as much as possible about ownership history,” museum director Thomas P Campbell said in a statement at the time.

The Cambodian government is also pursuing other artefacts it believes were illegally removed the country in recent decades.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned artefacts to Phnom Penh before – in 1997 it sent back a 10th Century Shiva’s head it had been given.

BBC News – Asia

"Looted" art returned to Cambodia