Cambodia heading for peaceful election day

Observors have been keeping a close eye on campaigning for Sunday's Cambodian election. [Radio Australia]

Foreign observors keeping a close eye on campaigning for Sunday's Cambodian election have been surprised and happy to report that thusfar it has largely been peaceful.

Cambodia's long-ruling prime minister, Hun Sen, looks set to notch up another election victory.

He is expected to take even more seats in the national parliament - even without the support of his coalition partner, Funcinpec.

While Hun Sen shows no signs of losing popularity, even after 23 years in power, the main opposition party is hoping to make headway.

The country representative for the Asia Foundation in Cambodia, Roderick Brazier, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program the atmosphere surrounding the election seems calm.

"I think we always have to remember in Cambodia that elections in the mid-90s were accompanied by hundreds and hundreds of deaths," he said.

"Intimidation and violence [is on] a very much reduced scale from earlier election campaigns, which I think is a marker of progress here."

Significant monitoring undertaken by local NGOs Comfrel and Nicfec, the two major local election organisations, will station thousands of individuals at polling booths.

International agencies will also have both local and international monitors at polling stations across the country.

But there are doubts that opposition parties are getting their fair share of representation.

As Sen Lam and Bill Bainbridge from Radio Australia reported in the lead-up to this Sunday's election, posters promoting Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party are pasted up everywhere, but very few for the opposition parties.

The Asia Foundation's Roderick Brazier says the opposition's visibility is more based on financial constraints that other issues.

"The CPP is very wealthy and can afford to print millions of posters, and place hundreds of ads on television and radio," he said.

"There are some other constraints - some opposition rallies are disrupted or impeded by CPP supporters - [but] that's mainly been in non-violent disruptive ways so far."

After 23 years of governance, the CPP enjoys growing popularity among the masses.

Mr Brazier says this is something of a puzzle to Western observers because this is a party with a chequered past.

"But from an ordinary Cambodians point of view, they have never been so wealthy, they have never had so many opportunities for employment," he said.

"The country has never been so stable, and most of all, infrastructure is being built - sealed roads, clinics and schools are being built and used for the first time," he said.

"Surveys that have been conducted by the International Republican Institute confirm that for close to 80 per cent of Cambodians, it's infrastructure that they care about the most.

"The CPP is smart enough now to provide that infrastructure."