Opposition Leader To Remain in Exile, as Doubts Rise Over Next Elections
Reporters, VOA Khmer20 November 2015
PHNOM PENH & WASHINGTON DC—
20 November 2015
“Looking ahead, we are very concerned that the 2017 local and the 2018 national elections will not be free or fair and could include violence,”
Opposition leader Sam
Rainsy says he will not immediately return to Cambodia, where he faces
the prospect of a two-year jail term on an old criminal defamation case.
The
decision to remain abroad was made after a meeting between Sam Rainsy
and other senior officials from the Cambodia National Rescue Party in
Manila on Friday.
Sam
Rainsy has been removed from parliament by a committee dominated by the
ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and his party’s vice president, Kem
Sokha, lost a senior seat at the National Assembly. Two more lawmakers
are still recovering from severe beatings by anti-opposition t hugs,
following demonstrations promoted by the ruling Cambodian People’s
Party.
All
of those issues need to be resolved with the ruling Cambodian People’s
Party before Sam Rainsy returns, Yem Ponhearith, a party spokesman, said
Friday. “Those have not been resolved up to today.” The Rescue Party,
as the National Assembly’s minority party, has not been allowed to
“properly function at all,” he said.
CPP
spokesman Sok Eysan said it is Sam Rainsy’s choice whether to return.
Sam Rainsy is facing an arrest warrant for a suit brought against him by
Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, who accused him of defamation for a 2008
speech, in which Sam Rainsy said Hor Namhong collaborated with the Khmer
Rouge.
Meanwhile,
in Washington, a senior State Department official told a Senate Foreign
Relations subcommittee that the recent political tension in Cambodia
casts doubt on whether upcoming elections will be free and fair.
“Looking
ahead, we are very concerned that the 2017 local and the 2018 national
elections will not be free or fair and could include violence,” Scott
Busby, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor, told senators. “We have strongly voiced our concerns
about intimidation of the opposition, noting that the Cambodian people
continue to express a preference for greater freedom and accountability
from their government.”
CPP
spokesman Phay Siphan on Friday called that testimony “groundless.” Sam
Rainsy and Kem Sokha are “destroying…peace and political order,” he
added.
Sok
Eysan said the current situation will not necessarily be the same in
three years, when national elections are scheduled. “This is just a
prediction,” he said of Busby’s Senate testimony, “a prediction that may
not be 100 percent true.” The Rescue Party “started the fire,” he said,
by inciting incidents over contentious border areas with Vietnam and
calling Hun Sen a “fascist” and a “dictator.”
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