Cambodia’s election commission on Tuesday described calls to boycott a controversial election on Jul 29 as a “crime” and said authorities were already pursuing charges against those who criticized the vote, Channel News Asia reports. A leading former opposition MP in Cambodia, Mu Sochua, has called on Japan to abandon support for the parliamentary election process in July calling the vote a “sham”. She said Tokyo should set aside its geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, which has offered strong support to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government and declare the elections undemocratic. Cambodia’s highest court dissolved the main opposition party on November last year, leaving authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen clear to extend more than three decades of power in next year’s election as rights groups decried the death of democracy.