City seers provide their poll forecasts

AFTER lighting a cluster of incense sticks and bowing three times, a fortuneteller on the capital’s north side yesterday draped his neck with wooden beads and ivory carvings before fanning out a deck of playing cards.

One of Phnom Penh’s most prominent clairvoyants, he claims the fate of the hotly contested commune elections this coming Sunday sits right at his fingertips.

On a crimson tablecloth, two cards are overturned: the ace of clubs, representing the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and the ace of diamonds, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

“I am very surprised at the two aces. This is the magic,” the fortuneteller said. The two aces, he says, show it is “very, very close”. There will be complaints but no protests, tension but no bloodshed.

The CPP, he predicts, will have a narrow vi ct or y ; around 52 percent to 48 percent.

He divined the opposition’s vulnerability from the presence of the notorious ace of spades; if a sick man comes to have his fortune told and overturns this unlucky card, it could spell out his death.

But when asked which communes will be dominated by which parties – and about the fate of jailed human rights defenders in the Kingdom – he demurs.

“I am just a fortuneteller, I am not an analyst,” he said.

Indeed, the city’s seers – CONTINUED

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