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1955 Cambodian general election
General elections were held in Cambodia on 9 June 1955. The elections were held following the peace established at the 1954 Geneva Conference and the independence of the country. The election were postponed to September 1955. The result was a landslide victory for the Sangkum party, which won all 91 seats. The election was marked by widespread voter fraud and intimidation. This began a period of one-party dominance of Prince Sihanouk's Sangkum until the coup of 1970.
Participating parties
Results
Accusations of fraud
Afterwards, accusations of massive electoral fraud arose. Kiernan (1985) notes that there were constituencies where the communists were judged to have strong popular support in which the Pracheachon candidates didn't obtain a single vote. In Memot, where communist guerrillas had been strong during the war and where there was a strong leftist following amongst rubber plantation workers, official figures gave 6149 votes for Sangkum, 99 for the Democrats and 0 votes for the Pracheachon candidate Sok Saphai. Sihanouk himself implicitly admitted the fraud in a 1958 publication. He mentions 39 districts of the country as 'red' or 'pink', meaning Pracheachon or Democratic candidates won those seats, based on the 1955 voting. Several of the district he points out as communist strongholds in the 1955 elections, were constituencies where Pracheachon candidates officially had obtained few votes or none at all.
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