A gift for electioneering

The common practice of officials doling out small gifts before elections does little to attract the vote of anyone on either side of the political divide, and people who vote for the CPP often do so in spite of – and not because of – handouts, a new study says.

Published in this month’s Pacific Affairs, a paper by Swedish academic Astrid Noren-Nilsson finds that the perception that election gifts like MSG and kramas are given as a quid-pro-quo breeds resentment and “suggests that the CPP should abandon this model”.

The conclusions are based on interviews with 192 people – 64 people at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park during the December 2013 protests, 64 living in the Chamkar Doung area on the capital’s outskirts and 64 living in two rural villages in Kandal province.

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