KANDAL, Cambodia, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Senate election for the fifth legislative term kicked off on Sunday, with four political parties taking part in the race, a National Election Committee (NEC) spokesperson said.
"All 33 polling stations were open at 7:00 a.m. (local time) and will be closed at 3:00 p.m.," Dim Sovannarom, a NEC member and spokesperson, told Xinhua.
The four political parties contesting in the election are the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the Funcinpec Party, the Khmer Will Party, and the Nation Power Party, he said.
Former Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, president of the CPP, voted at a polling station in southern Kandal province, as his son, incumbent Prime Minister Hun Manet, cast his ballot in the capital Phnom Penh.
The Senate election, held every six years, is a non-universal election because ordinary citizens do not take part in the electoral process.
Sovannarom said all 125 members of the National Assembly, or the lower house, and 11,622 commune councilors will cast their ballots at the 33 polling stations across the Southeast Asian country.
He added that the Senate, or the upper house, has 62 seats, but the vote will be held for 58 seats only, as two senators will be appointed by Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and two others by the National Assembly.
Preliminary results will be announced on Sunday evening, as temporary results will be publicized on March 2, and the official ones with allocation of seats will be on April 2 if there is no complaint filed by any political parties against the results, he said.
Political analysts predicted that the CPP will win a landslide victory because it has possessed the most seats in the National Assembly and the commune councils across the kingdom.
The CPP has currently occupied 120 out of the 125 National Assembly seats and 9,376 out of the 11,622 commune council seats, according to the NEC.
"The CPP will absolutely win at least nearly all the seats in this Senate election because the CPP has already controlled the most majority in the commune councils all over the country," Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute of Cambodia, a think tank under the Royal Academy of Cambodia, told Xinhua.
"One more important thing is that there is a split among the commune councilors from the opposition party, so their votes will be divided," he added.
Thong Mengdavid, a research supervisor at the Phnom Penh-based Asian Vision Institute, agreed that the CPP will remain unbeatable because of its dominant control of the National Assembly and the commune councils.
"The CPP will sweep most of the seats in this election, undoubtedly," he told Xinhua.
Hun Sen, 71, has said that he will take over as the president of the Senate after this election, giving him the role of acting head of state when the king is absent or out of the country.
In the last Senate election in 2018, the CPP won all 58 seats. ■