After being rebuffed by the NEC in his calls for an international investigation into election irregularities, Sam Rainsy has called on UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to dispatch observers.

In a letter dated August 5 and released yesterday, the opposition leader writes that “under the terms of the Paris Peace Agreements ... both the UN and the Kingdom of Cambodia have a legal obligation to ensure that our country’s ‘liberal and pluralist democracy’ be grounded in ‘free and fair elections’.”

“We believe that numerous irregularities in electoral processes produced an outcome that does not properly reflect the will of the people,” it notes.

The NEC has acceded to a joint investigation committee involving both the opposition and ruling parties but has rejected international involvement as “illegal”, causing the CNRP to pull out. NEC has said international and local groups could still monitor.

NEC secretary-general Tep Nytha said the agency’s stance was firm. “We don’t have the right to invite the UN [to join investigations],” he said.