Cambodians "cool off" for general election

By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Thousands of migrant workers left the Cambodian capital on Saturday for their home towns and villages to cast their votes in a general election overshadowed by a dispute with Thailand over a 900-year-old temple.

Buses and pick-up trucks leaving Phnom Penh were packed as the Southeast Asian nation enjoyed a "cooling off" day on the eve of voting in a poll almost certain to give another five-year term to Hun Sen, Prime Minister of the past 23 years.

All alcohol sales were banned for 48 hours from midnight on Friday, as was campaigning, to let voters get home and calm down after a month of often vitriolic electioneering.

"This shows people's strong enthusiasm to vote," Tep Nitha, Secretary-General of the National Election Committee, told a news conference.

Campaigning was more orderly than Cambodia's previous exercises in a democracy created by the United Nations in the early 1990s to bring an end to more than two decades of war and upheaval, including the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields".

However, all parties quickly became embroiled in the row over the Preah Vihear temple, which has led to build-ups of troops and artillery on both sides of the border, and raised fears of a border war.

The temple, which sits on a jungle-clad escarpment separating the two countries, is claimed by both sides but was awarded to Cambodia in 1962 by the International Court of Justice, a ruling that has rankled in Thailand ever since.

Cambodia's successful bid to have the ruins listed as a World Heritage site this month inflamed nationalist passions in Bangkok, where street campaigners are trying to overthrow the government. Thailand's foreign minister was forced to resign.