Sam Rainsy Defends Opposition Deal with Cambodia’s Ruling Party

[geovalin]

Sam Rainsy Defends Opposition Deal with Cambodia’s Ruling Party

pic: Heng Chivoan

Cambodia opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Wednesday defended his party’s decision to forge a political settlement with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), saying it was in the interest of implementing key electoral reform and bringing greater freedom to the country.

Speaking in a video posted to his Facebook account, the president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) said that the party’s decision to end a boycott of parliament was necessary in order to amend the country’s laws and reform the National Election Committee (NEC), which oversees the nation’s polls.

His statement appears to be aimed at CNRP members in the dark about the agreement clinched Tuesday with Hun Sen in which the party agreed to join parliament after a nearly one-year absence and the CPP pledged to back reforms to the government-appointed NEC.

“My dear patriots, before judging [the CNRP’s stance in its agreement with the CPP], please wait until the outcome is made plain, then form your opinion on whether what we did was right or wrong,” he said.

“No other option was better than the one that we chose.”

Sam Rainsy said that in breaking the political deadlock with the CPP, the CNRP had “ended the tense situation” in place since the ruling party was declared the victor by the NEC in elections in July last year despite allegations of widespread irregularities.

The standoff had led elected CNRP lawmakers to boycott the National Assembly, or parliament, and prompted opposition supporters to stage frequent protests demanding Hun Sen’s resignation and re-elections—several of which were met with violence by security personnel.

Sam Rainsy said that Tuesday’s compromise would also lead to the reopening of Freedom Park, the only public space provided for protests in the capital Phnom Penh and which was closed off by authorities in the aftermath of a deadly crackdown on CNRP-supported striking garment workers in January.

Following the closure, a ban on protests was put in place in the capital, which the opposition leader said would be rescinded through the deal.

He said the deal also resulted in the release from jail Tuesday of seven CNRP lawmakers and a party activist who had been detained and charged with insurrection last week.

The eight were arrested after clashes broke out between security personnel and opposition supporters demanding a reopening of Freedom Park.

“We ended the tense situation, those who were imprisoned were released, soon Freedom Park will be reopened and the street protest ban will be rescinded. So we will have our rights and freedom back,” he said.

NEC reform

Sam Rainsy said that only by joining parliament can CNRP lawmakers vote for electoral reforms to be incorporated in the country’s constitution.

“The most important thing is that we want a reform of the NEC. The reform of the NEC must be done through the National Assembly, because until we amend the laws and the constitution, we cannot change it,” he said.

“The NEC members have been taking orders from or supporting the CPP, but now the NEC will consist of nine members—four from the CNRP, four from the CPP and one who will be unanimously chosen by the two parties. Therefore, no one party has the upper hand on another.”

The CNRP president said his party would work to “ensure that the NEC is unbiased … to guarantee a proper and fair election” in the future.

As part of the agreement, both parties will agree upon a date for the country’s next national elections, which were originally scheduled for July 2018.

Agence France-Presse cited a CPP official as saying that the new elections would not be held before February 2018, despite calls from the opposition to hold them earlier.

Reactions to deal

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Surya Subedi, on Wednesday “warmly welcomed” the agreement that ended the long-lasting deadlock but said it “only marks the beginning of the true work of reforming the State institutions.”

“This is an opportunity to carry out a comprehensive reform of lasting character in line with international standards, as outlined in my reports on electoral, judicial and parliamentary reforms, so that the situation which has been prevailing since the National Assembly elections in July 2013 does not repeat itself.”

Last month, at the end of a 10-day visit to Cambodia, Subedi said that his investigations had led him to believe that the country’s judicial, legislative and executive branches are ineffective at promoting and protecting the rights of the people.

The Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) also welcomed the deal, saying in a statement that the two sides should resolve their differences in the legislature.

“This is a step in the right direction. Parliament is the place to work together to find solutions to political disputes through dialogue,” the group’s secretary general Martin Chungong said.

“IPU is ready to help with this so that the Cambodian parliament can deliver on the mandate given it by the Cambodian people.”

Falling short

Other groups expressed concerns with the vagueness of the agreement and criticized the CNRP for dropping many of its earlier demands, including one to endorse NEC membership with a two-thirds majority in parliament, instead of an absolute majority, as decided in Tuesday’s deal.

The Phnom Penh Post quoted Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) chairman Ou Virak as saying that details were omitted in several key areas of the agreement, ensuring “there will be a lot of wrangling in the future.”

He expected a “lot of problems” on the selection of the nine members of the NEC, especially the one who is to be jointly chosen by the CPP and CNRP.

The Post also quoted Laura Thornton, the resident director at the National Democratic Institute, which monitors elections and has suggested key reforms, as calling the agreement “very disappointing.”

“We’ve stood firmly behind certain key positions that are necessary in order to improve the credibility of elections in Cambodia, and I don’t see those reflected in the statement. I can only be hopeful they are coming later,” she said.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/deal-07232014180806.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Jonathan Fairfield]

Agreement a tough sell

Thu, 24 July 2014

Meas Sokchea and Kevin Ponniah

Prime Minister Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy are to meet with King Norodom Sihamoni at the Royal Palace today to officially inform him of the political agreement reached earlier this week that brought an end to a nearly one-year deadlock.

By doing so, they will kick-start a series of events that could see the Cambodia National Rescue Party’s 55 lawmakers – including Rainsy, who announced yesterday he would swap in for Kampong Cham lawmaker-elect Kuoy Bunroeun – take their oaths and swear in to parliament within a matter of days.

But not all are happy.

Many CNRP supporters have been voicing their discontent with the agreement on social media and on radio, with a common charge being that the opposition will be overrun by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party in parliament.

Yin Hing, 55, and her husband Hean La, 65, travelled from Kep province to camp out with the CNRP at Freedom Park last year during the party’s rolling post-election protests that were abruptly ended after a violent crackdown by authorities in early January. The farmers say they are worried that by choosing to work with the CPP, the CNRP is at risk of being marginalised.

“I am not happy with [this agreement], because I do not have any confidence in the Cambodian People’s Party, because I think back to the Funcinpec regime,” Hing said, referring to the once-dominant royalist party which was bullied into a power-sharing agreement with the CPP after the 1993 election. Funcinpec’s political power steadily eroded in successive coalitions with Hun Sen’s party.

“The CPP has power, and we do not have any power at all. Whatever the CPP wants to do, they will be able to do.”

Sim Vuthy, a Phnom Penh market vendor and fervent opposition supporter, also said he was afraid that the CNRP, like Funcinpec, would not stand up to the CPP in parliament and instead adopt their ways.

“Honestly, my heart is not happy, because I am afraid that [the CNRP] will also become corrupt.”

Other supporters, however, were cautiously optimistic.

Phak Vannak, who represents a community in Kampong Speu’s Omlaing commune that is locked in an ongoing land dispute with a sugar company owned by tycoon Ly Yong Phat, said he hoped that the victims of land grabs would no longer be ignored in parliament with the CNRP present.

“Those two parties have to respect human rights. And I would like to say to the CNRP: Please don’t think about power too much. Think about the people who are the victims so they can improve their futures.”

Soem Sim, a teacher from Kampong Cham who approved of the deal but remained wary of CPP “tricks”, agreed.

“[The CNRP] must work hard for people by daring to speak out. When they see something wrong, they must say something’s wrong, and when they see something right, they must say something’s right.”

Among the political elite close to the party, there also appears to be discord about whether Tuesday’s agreement was the right decision.

“To me it wasn’t a negotiation. It was just the CPP forcing the CNRP to accept whatever they wanted,” said Prince Sisowath Thomico, who ran unsuccessfully with the party last July, referring to the fact that eight CNRP officials were in prison as the talks took place.

Thomico believes the assembly boycott should have continued, given a CPP majority in parliament will mean “nothing will change with this agreement”.

“There is [also] one thing we have forgotten over the last few months. We have forgotten about justice and transparency around the results of the elections. If we do not take justice and transparency about the elections, we have nothing and the deal is completely meaningless,” he added.

Mu Sochua, a senior party figure and one of the opposition officials released from Prey Sar prison hours after the deal was struck on Tuesday, said yesterday that the party was well aware that many people were unhappy.

While it would “take a few days and maybe weeks until this uncertainty period will subside”, it was clear there were serious misconceptions among the public, she said.

Chief among these, Sochua continued, is that many mistakenly believe the CNRP is joining some sort of coalition with the CPP, rather than simply taking their seats in the assembly.

“They think we are going into the executive branch, which is the government itself, [but] if you look at the agreement, it is only about the National Assembly as an institution. They have had many bitter experiences with Funcinpec, but we are not Funcinpec, and they know that.”

The agreement also provides for significant changes to national institutions and the internal rules of parliament, she said, paving the way for much-needed reforms and a formal opposition role in parliament.

“If we stay out of that house, which is the parliament, we will be part of the problem instead of part of the solution,” she said.

If all goes to plan, according to Rainsy, the CNRP could take its seats in a specially convened assembly session on Monday, a date that would mark the first anniversary of last year’s election.

It would be a symbolic move that would only further reinforce the scripted feel of events of the past week or so that brought such a seemingly swift end to a lengthy impasse.

“[After the audience with the King], we would swear in and take our oath in the following days. So it’s a matter of days, at most one week. Then things will be settled for us to go to the National Assembly [for] a special session because the National Assembly is now in recess,” Rainsy said yesterday.

The party leader was not allowed to run in the election, but told local media yesterday he will swap in for the parliament seat of Bunrouen, who would become one of the opposition’s four appointees to the NEC.

Kem Sokha, the CNRP deputy president and the more hard-line of the pair, has remained silent since Rainsy announced the “final talks” on Sunday. He will take the first deputy presidency position in the assembly that the CNRP received as part of Tuesday’s deal.

Chheang Vun, a senior ruling Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker and the Assembly’s spokesman, said yesterday he could not confirm whether a special session could be arranged for the CNRP to take their seats.

Separately, the international community has welcomed the rapprochement. Yesterday, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement that his country hoped that with the agreement, “national reconciliation and the prompt normalisation of the National Assembly will be achieved” in order to progress towards reforms.

Surya Subedi, the UN rights envoy to Cambodia, said that while both parties deserved congratulations, “the agreement reached on the National Election Committee only marks the beginning of the true work of reforming the State institutions”.

The US Embassy said on Tuesday that “hopefully that these developments will lay the groundwork for continued reform and enable both parties to work together for the advancement of democracy in Cambodia”.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY WILL JACKSON, MAY TITTHARA AND DAVID BOYLE

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/agreement-tough-sell