A/HRC/21/63 73. There should be a more effective, impartial and non-discriminatory procedure for the registration of voters in Cambodia. Accordingly, the Government should expeditiously provide necessary documents, Khmer nationality identity cards, passports and other necessary civil registration documents to all citizens for nominal fees and should reregister voters using the data from those cards as a basis to establish a new electoral roll. 74. Any Cambodian citizen eligible to vote should be entitled to request registration with the electoral and/or local authorities at any point during the year. Once he or she is issued with an identification card, that card should be valid for life, unless a change in personal circumstances warrants amendment. 75. The commune council elections in June 2012 identified continuing problems with voter identity documents, especially the issuance and use of fraudulent documents (the now-abolished form 1018). The National Election Committee should review the process of issuing such documents to ensure that the system is not abused by political parties in their favour and that there are no electoral malpractices. 76. The National Election Committee should devise special measures to ensure that those who are homeless or have been recently evicted from their land are not disenfranchised in the forthcoming elections. 77. To hold free and fair elections, the entire political environment should be free and conducive to exercising the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the international human rights treaties ratified by Cambodia. The Government should therefore ensure that all persons are able to exercise their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association. 78. The electoral process, including the voter registration process, and the manner in which electoral disputes are dealt with should be transparent and conform to international standards. For example, the National Electoral Committee should make public the names of polling officers and make the voter list available to candidates from all political parties upon request, affording them an opportunity to challenge the fraudulent inclusion of names on the list. 79. The National Electoral Committee should appoint professional election administrators to replace village chiefs during voter registration and on election day and bring all commune election officers and processes under its own stricter supervision mechanism. 80. The current law, which requires a person to be nominated to stand for election by a political party, should be amended to make it possible for independent candidates to stand in the national elections. 81. Since Cambodia allows dual citizenship, the National Election Committee should make it possible for Cambodians living abroad to exercise their voting rights, at least in the countries where it has diplomatic and/or consular representation, as done by many other countries. 82. Lastly, the Special Rapporteur is aware of the situation of Sam Rainsy, the leader of the Sam Rainsy Party. He has been convicted on charges that are allegedly politically motivated. A political solution should be found to enable him, as the leader of the opposition, to play a full role in Cambodian politics. The Special Rapporteur believes that a concerted effort by the ruling and opposition parties towards reconciliation is in the interests of stronger and deeper democratization of Cambodia. This is especially so in the lead-up to the national assembly elections. For longer-term peace and prosperity in Cambodia, there should be a level playing field for all political parties to compete on an equal footing. The people should have faith in the system of 17