Cambodia’s National Election Committee (NEC) will make the disabled a top priority in political participation and include related policy in the country’s new election law to ensure them equality in the next nationwide elections, an agency official said.

NEC spokesman Hang Puthea said the independent body that oversees Cambodia’s elections would reach out to the disabled who live in remote areas of the country to ensure they have an equal opportunity to vote in the 2018 general elections.

In March, the Cambodian parliament passed two election reform laws to set up an independent NEC with nine members and establish rules for elections, including campaigning and voting.

“Handicapped people have been made a top priority for voter registration and polling stations,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service. “Although the registration [process] for the voter list has not yet started to address the issue of disabled people, the NEC will provide information to polling stations about how to handle them.”

Disabled Cambodians need strong support from the government as well as other political parties, he said.

Ngin Saoroth, executive director of the Cambodian Disabled People’s Organization (CDPO), said he strongly supports the NEC’s efforts to promote the rights of disabled people, but remains skeptical until he sees such a policy in practice.

“The promise is not like the actual practice,” he said. “What the [NEC] has promised is good, but I don’t know what level of this promise it will achieve. We will wait and see.”

On Monday, the CDPO made suggestions to the NEC to help facilitate greater access to voter registration for the disabled at a workshop in the capital Phnom Penh during which they discussed the results of a four-month study conducted by the CDPO, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

Ngin Saoroth said he would lobby the NEC to add provisions for the disabled in the country’s new election law to politically empower all such people.

“We encourage NEC to work with disabled people’s representatives because they know about disabled issues, so they can help them out,” he said. “We are not helping any political parties, but we aim to help promote disable people’s rights in order to promote human rights, political rights and democracy in Cambodia.”

Obstacles remain

Roughly 5 percent of Cambodia’s population of more than 15 million is disabled, according to the United Nations Development Programme, although the Cambodian government’s official figure is 2.3 percent.

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Cambodia?s Election Body to Make the Disabled a Priority in Next Elections