80% Turnout for Cambodian Vote

One small explosion next to an opposition party's headquarters and the discovery of two grenades outside the royal palace marred yesterday's otherwise peaceful general election in Cambodia.

Election officials estimated at least 80% of the 6.3 million registered voters cast ballots in the country's third poll for the 123-seat national assembly.

The national election commission blamed the explosion of a crude, homemade device outside the headquarters of the royalist opposition party, Funcinpec, in the capital, Phnom Penh, and the grenades outside the palace, on "hoodlums who want to tarnish our nation's image".

Some monitors thought the explosion, in which one person was slightly injured, might have been orchestrated by Funcinpec as an election stunt.

Dominic Cardy, the Cambodia director of the US-based National Democratic Institute, was surprised when Funcinpec officials gave him a photocopy of the alleged perpetrator's identity card only minutes after the incident.

"The fact that the explosion wasn't even strong enough to blow up the garbage can it was in, that the party was able to solve the crime so quickly and find an ethnic Vietnamese to blame, makes it all seem rather dubious," he said.

One of the main policies of the two main opposition parties, and particularly Funcinpec, has been a xenophobic attack on the Vietnamese for their alleged grabbing of border areas.

Hang Puthea, the director of one of Cambodia's two main independent monitoring groups, Nicfec, dismissed the explosion as an isolated incident. "Overall, today was OK," he said. "There were some irregularities and some disorganisation, but nothing significant."

Khan Sophirom, who voted in Phnom Penh, said he initially could not find his name on the register, while other voters gave up in frustration after waiting for almost an hour. When he voted, the prime minister, Hun Sen, said nothing beyond urging others to do the same and commenting on the weather.

Observers predict he will remain in office because his Cambodian People's party (CPP) is expected to win about 60 seats, with the remainder split between Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy party.

The CPP's dominance is due to its control of the bureaucracy, and especially the appointment of village chiefs. Many Cambodians also believe its claim that it is responsible for the country's peace in the wake of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime which caused the deaths of at least 1.7m Cambodians. Opposition parties accuse it of being authoritarian.

Preliminary returns are expected today and observers fear that the country could degenerate into violence if the CPP is seen to have won too large a share of the seats. The official results are not due for a fortnight.