SRP President Sam Rainsy leads a protest against rising food prices along a street in Phnom Penh on April 6, 2008. (Photo by: AFP)
Friday, 04 December 2009
Sebastian Strangio
The Phnom Penh Post
After a tumultuous year, the Sam Rainsy Party finds itself at a crossroads, but observers are divided on its future prospects in a shifting political climate.
STRIPPED of his parliamentary immunity for the second time this year, opposition leader Sam Rainsy has, once again, found himself at the centre of the debate over Cambodia’s democratic reform. But the lifting of his parliamentary immunity and the actions that led to it – the uprooting of several wooden border markers in a rice field at the Vietnamese border – have raised questions of another kind, about the relevance of Sam Rainsy and his eponymous party in a shifting political landscape.
Though the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) remains the Kingdom’s biggest proponent of Western-style democracy, some observers fear that the party, and its president, have reached the outer limits of their influence and have turned away from the grassroots campaigning that marked the SRP’s heyday in favour of politically charged but somewhat hollow political gestures.
This has been a tumultuous year for the SRP. Sam Rainsy and SRP lawmakers Mu Sochua and Ho Vann have each lost parliamentary immunity at one point or another in tense legal tussles with senior government officials.
Despite the international media coverage of its recent theatrics, and attention in the chambers of the US congress and the European parliament in Brussels, it is unclear whether the opposition’s strategies have maximised its chances of leveraging demographic changes into long-term political gains.
Some observers say the party has declined since its peak in the mid-2000s, a trend illustrated by its failure to capture the tens of thousands of Funcinpec voters who withdrew their support from the party after the royalist split in 2006.
“All those votes should have gone to the SRP, and they didn’t,” said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. He said the SRP’s lack of a concrete policy platform causes its political spats with the government to become quickly personalised and drags the party into unwinnable battles with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). “There’s no proper analysis or real policy,” he added. “If you’re going to oppose something, are you in a position to offer anything that’s different?”
“They talk about party leaders being persecuted on the basis of esoteric rights that many Cambodian people have very little ownership of. They’ve adapted to appeal to outside constituencies rather than Cambodian voters,” he said, describing the loss of the Funcinpec vote as a “huge missed opportunity”.
Sorpong Peou, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, said that as the country’s main opposition leader, Sam Rainsy must maintain a degree of assertiveness, but that appeals to distant international organisations have achieved little for the party.
“At the end of the day, the opposition is at the mercy of the CPP, which is willing to allow a degree of opposition in order to legitimise its domination and uses this type of legitimacy to gain international support,” she said. “In this sense, the opposition’s appeals have little real impact on domestic politics.”
The ‘donors’ darling’
Sam Rainsy returned to Cambodia from France in 1992, he was a rising star in the royalist political firmament. A founding member of then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s Funcinpec party in 1981, Rainsy had advanced through the ranks to become an elected parliamentarian during Funcinpec’s stunning win in the UN-backed elections of May 1993 and was appointed minister of finance in the CPP-Funcinpec coalition government in July.
But his ascent was short lived, and the fall that followed set the tone for a political career marked by bitter clashes with the government.
In October 1994 – just over a year after his appointment – Sam Rainsy was dismissed from his post in a major cabinet reshuffle, following his clear criticism of the corruption and nepotism that plagued the coalition. The following May, he was dumped from the party altogether and lost his National Assembly seat a month later.
At the time of its founding in 1995, the Khmer Nation Party (KNP) – the SRP’s predecessor – was a new feature on the Cambodian political landscape. Unlike the CPP – which secured its support through a patronage system established in the 1980s – and Funcinpec, which traded heavily on the prestige of the monarchy, Sam Rainsy’s new party put liberal democratic principles front and centre. At the time, Sam Rainsy said his expulsion from Funcinpec would give him the opportunity “to mobilise millions of people” sharing the same ideals.
In spite of the SRP’s idealistic bent, however, the party’s constituency remains overwhelmingly urban: In 2008, it won six of its 26 seats in Phnom Penh and five in Kampong Cham, as well as three each in heavily populated Kandal and Prey Veng provinces, both close to the capital. In 12 of Cambodia’s 24 provinces and municipalities – among them the most remote and least populated – the party did not score a single seat.
Caroline Hughes, an associate professor of governance studies at Murdoch University in Perth, said the SRP was not to blame for its difficulties in rural areas, in large part because of political intimidation by the CPP and the presence of its well-oiled machinery of patronage. Sam Rainsy – a “donors’ darling” in the early 1990s – has gradually become a more “marginal” figure as a result of waning international support, a rift with the Cambodian union movement and a concerted campaign of violence and intimidation that reached its apotheosis in a bloody grenade attack on a KNP protest in March 1997, she said. “Sam Rainsy did attempt to organise his supporters around a whole range of more concrete issues, but he was consistently blocked,” she said. “He organised a demonstration against corruption, and a grenade was thrown at it. He organised strikes in pursuit of a minimum-wage raise and was criticised by international organisations who said he shouldn’t interfere with unions.”
She added: “I don’t think we can blame the SRP for the weakness of the Cambodian political opposition when the government has worked consistently to reduce the political space for any kind of organised activism on any issue.”
A one-man show?
Others, however, said the party’s apparent difficulties stem from the erosion of its own internal democratic processes under the constant threat of defections and government intimidation.
The SRP organisation, Ou Virak said, is “like a scared child – the more things happen to them, the more they start to pull back. They refrain from meeting people and they refrain from opening up because of bad experiences”.
“There are some good people in the party that I know that cannot move up in the ranks,” he said. “There are some very good people who were left out.”
Ken Virak was a member of the SRP’s Steering Committee who left to form his own party – the People’s Power Party – in 2007, after becoming disillusioned with the SRP’s internal workings. He said the party had given up its role as a democratic opposition party “step by step”, and that the Steering Committee – nominally in charge of party decision-making – no longer had any real power.
“There is no democracy inside the party. Most of the decisions are made only by a minority of members who are powerful in the party and associated with Sam Rainsy,” he said.
Political decisions, originally made by a two-thirds majority vote of the Steering Committee, were watered down to a simple 50-percent-plus-one majority system and then to a system where the party president can in effect make every decision himself.
“I found that before every election, members of the party always broke away because of the political decision-making and partisanship,” he said.
Ou Virak said major decisions are now made by the party’s eight-member Permanent Committee, over which Sam Rainsy has final veto power.
Ken Virak still has faith in the opposition – refusing to run his new party in any elections in order not to cannibalise opposition votes – but said that all opposition groups, including the Human Rights Party and NRP, must unite if they want to have any chance at eating into the CPP’s majority in the 2013 polls.
Anti-communist roots
Born in Phnom Penh in 1949, Sam Rainsy grew up at a time of change and regeneration. His father, Sam Sary, was a key member of Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum government, but fell victim to the Prince’s security police after he was implicated in the so-called Bangkok Plot, an attempt to topple the government with the support of Thailand’s right-wing Marshal Sarit Thanarat. Sam Sary disappeared in 1962 and was presumed killed, possibly by the government. Shortly afterwards, Sam Rainsy’s mother, In Em, took the remaining family members to live in France, where he remained for the next three decades.
In a recent interview with the Post, Sam Rainsy described his father’s death as a “traumatising” experience, but said that Sam Sary’s political views permeated the family and set the trajectory of his own political development.
Certain pivotal events in Europe – notably, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 – were daily topics of conversation in the Sam household and went some way to forming the ideals that would grow into the SRP’s own brand of nationalism.
“When it came to Southeast Asia, my father was in favour of a strict neutrality – that Cambodia should not move closer to the communist world,” he said. “This has marked my background and my conviction that communism is oppressive – that freedom is essential and that we have to fight for [it],”
Sam Rainsy said that despite having been founded largely on his initiative in 1995, the KNP – renamed the SRP in 1998 because of legal disputes over the KNP name – had grown into an “organisation of its own”, linking Cambodia with Khmer communities abroad. He also downplayed his role as the party’s figurehead, referring to it as an “anachronistic” notion.
“If it was a one-man show, the show would have stopped a long time ago, given all the problems that we’ve been facing,” he said.
Speeding forward
Sam Rainsy said the SRP was the only party in Cambodia that holds organised elections from the grassroots, a system that is “just the opposite” of the CPP’s centrally controlled networks.
“They appoint their cadres – their apparatchiks – at the grassroots, but we are the only party that has organised elections,” he said.
Kimsour Phirith, a member of the SRP’s Permanent Committee, acknowledged that “internal disputes and misunderstandings”, as well as “competition at the leadership level”, had hurt the party at recent elections, but said the party is well aware of the problem and has worked to resolve it.
Similarly, the “loss” of the former Funcinpec vote was largely “due to intimidation and vote-buying in non-transparent elections”, Sam Rainsy said – a claim the opposition has made consistently since the July 2008 poll. “All of the over 13,000 powerful village chiefs are appointed by the ruling CPP, which is a heavily oppressive factor in a rural country like Cambodia. In the face of such pressure, virtually all Funcinpec leaders have sold out to the CPP,” he said.
When asked how the party might hope to erode the CPP’s entrenched network of patronage and make headway in rural areas, Sam Rainsy said current and future demographic changes were swinging the SRP’s way, a factor reflected in the party’s recent formation of a youth congress.
“In a typical family, you have the grandfather, who votes for Funcinpec; you have the father, who votes for the CPP; and you have the children, who when they reach voting age will vote for the SRP,” he said. “It will take less time than one might imagine now, because of the progress of technology, information, communication and education. History is accelerating.”
Sam Rainsy said that unlike CPP support – “bought” with party patronage benefits – each SRP ballot was a “politically conscious vote”, bringing with it a host of risks.
“The progressive concept of social justice is eroding the leniency towards the regressive patronage system. The younger generations will be the spearhead for this democratic trend moving Cambodia out of the Middle Ages,” he said.
Koul Panha, executive director of election monitor Comfrel, said Sam Rainsy retains a lot of political capital for taking such a principled stance against corruption in the 1990s and maintaining it consistently over the years since, but that fresh challenges are on the horizon.
“I think he still has that credibility. He resigned from a key position in government and showed he is that kind of politician,” he said. “The problem is how to communicate that credibility to the people.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VONG SOKHENG AND SAM RITH
--------
June 1992
Sam Rainsy returns to Cambodia from Europe, becoming a member of the interim Supreme National Council.
May 23, 1993
Sam Rainsy is elected as a Funcinpec lawmaker for Siem Reap in UN-backed polls that see a stunning royalist victory.
July 1993
Sam Rainsy is appointed minister for economics and finance in the CPP-Funcinpec coalition government.
October 20, 1994
Sam Rainsy is expelled from the cabinet following a major reshuffle.
May 13, 1995
Sam Rainsy is expelled from both Funcinpec and the National Assembly, and forms the Khmer Nation Party (KNP) later in the year.
March 30, 1997
Assassins throw grenades into a KNP rally outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, killing more than 16 and injuring scores of others. FBI investigators allege government involvement in the attack.
July 26, 1998
The KNP – now renamed the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) – performs well in the national elections, gaining 15 seats and winning 14.3 percent of the vote.
July 27, 2003
The SRP wins 24 National Assembly seats, or 21.9 percent of the vote, in national elections.
February 3, 2005
Sam Rainsy goes into self-exile after being accused of defamation and losing his parliamentary immunity at the hands of the National Assembly, along with fellow SRP lawmakers Chea Poch and Cheam Channy. Cheam Channy is arrested in February and tried in August 2005 for creating an illegal armed force. He is sentenced to seven years in prison, but is granted a royal pardon in February 2006.
December 22, 2005
Phnom Penh Municipal Court tries Sam Rainsy in absentia for defamation and sentences him to 18 months in prison and orders him to pay US$14,000 in fines and compensation.
February 5, 2006
Sam Rainsy receives a royal pardon at Prime Minister Hun Sen’s request, and returns to the country on February 10.
July 27, 2008
The SRP again wins 21.9 percent of the popular vote, but increases its share of National Assembly seats to 26.
February 26, 2009
The National Assembly votes to suspend Sam Rainsy’s immunity to force him to pay a fine levied against him by the National Election Committee. His immunity is restored on March 10.
June 22, 2009
The National Assembly votes to suspend the immunity of SRP lawmaker Mu Sochua after she filed a lawsuit accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of defamation. Lawmaker Ho Vann is also stripped of his immunity for allegedly belittling the educational credentials of senior military officers.
November 16, 2009
Parliament again lifts Rainsy’s immunity, following an incident in which he uprooted wooden markers at the border with Vietnam.
STRIPPED of his parliamentary immunity for the second time this year, opposition leader Sam Rainsy has, once again, found himself at the centre of the debate over Cambodia’s democratic reform. But the lifting of his parliamentary immunity and the actions that led to it – the uprooting of several wooden border markers in a rice field at the Vietnamese border – have raised questions of another kind, about the relevance of Sam Rainsy and his eponymous party in a shifting political landscape.
Though the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) remains the Kingdom’s biggest proponent of Western-style democracy, some observers fear that the party, and its president, have reached the outer limits of their influence and have turned away from the grassroots campaigning that marked the SRP’s heyday in favour of politically charged but somewhat hollow political gestures.
This has been a tumultuous year for the SRP. Sam Rainsy and SRP lawmakers Mu Sochua and Ho Vann have each lost parliamentary immunity at one point or another in tense legal tussles with senior government officials.
Despite the international media coverage of its recent theatrics, and attention in the chambers of the US congress and the European parliament in Brussels, it is unclear whether the opposition’s strategies have maximised its chances of leveraging demographic changes into long-term political gains.
Some observers say the party has declined since its peak in the mid-2000s, a trend illustrated by its failure to capture the tens of thousands of Funcinpec voters who withdrew their support from the party after the royalist split in 2006.
“All those votes should have gone to the SRP, and they didn’t,” said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. He said the SRP’s lack of a concrete policy platform causes its political spats with the government to become quickly personalised and drags the party into unwinnable battles with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). “There’s no proper analysis or real policy,” he added. “If you’re going to oppose something, are you in a position to offer anything that’s different?”
"If it was a one-man show, the show would have stopped a long time ago, given all the problems we've been facing."Another observer, who declined to be named, said that despite having won the SRP international attention, the recent strategy of waging legal battles with government officials had “steered the party way off message”.
“They talk about party leaders being persecuted on the basis of esoteric rights that many Cambodian people have very little ownership of. They’ve adapted to appeal to outside constituencies rather than Cambodian voters,” he said, describing the loss of the Funcinpec vote as a “huge missed opportunity”.
Sorpong Peou, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, said that as the country’s main opposition leader, Sam Rainsy must maintain a degree of assertiveness, but that appeals to distant international organisations have achieved little for the party.
“At the end of the day, the opposition is at the mercy of the CPP, which is willing to allow a degree of opposition in order to legitimise its domination and uses this type of legitimacy to gain international support,” she said. “In this sense, the opposition’s appeals have little real impact on domestic politics.”
The ‘donors’ darling’
Sam Rainsy returned to Cambodia from France in 1992, he was a rising star in the royalist political firmament. A founding member of then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s Funcinpec party in 1981, Rainsy had advanced through the ranks to become an elected parliamentarian during Funcinpec’s stunning win in the UN-backed elections of May 1993 and was appointed minister of finance in the CPP-Funcinpec coalition government in July.
But his ascent was short lived, and the fall that followed set the tone for a political career marked by bitter clashes with the government.
In October 1994 – just over a year after his appointment – Sam Rainsy was dismissed from his post in a major cabinet reshuffle, following his clear criticism of the corruption and nepotism that plagued the coalition. The following May, he was dumped from the party altogether and lost his National Assembly seat a month later.
At the time of its founding in 1995, the Khmer Nation Party (KNP) – the SRP’s predecessor – was a new feature on the Cambodian political landscape. Unlike the CPP – which secured its support through a patronage system established in the 1980s – and Funcinpec, which traded heavily on the prestige of the monarchy, Sam Rainsy’s new party put liberal democratic principles front and centre. At the time, Sam Rainsy said his expulsion from Funcinpec would give him the opportunity “to mobilise millions of people” sharing the same ideals.
In spite of the SRP’s idealistic bent, however, the party’s constituency remains overwhelmingly urban: In 2008, it won six of its 26 seats in Phnom Penh and five in Kampong Cham, as well as three each in heavily populated Kandal and Prey Veng provinces, both close to the capital. In 12 of Cambodia’s 24 provinces and municipalities – among them the most remote and least populated – the party did not score a single seat.
Caroline Hughes, an associate professor of governance studies at Murdoch University in Perth, said the SRP was not to blame for its difficulties in rural areas, in large part because of political intimidation by the CPP and the presence of its well-oiled machinery of patronage. Sam Rainsy – a “donors’ darling” in the early 1990s – has gradually become a more “marginal” figure as a result of waning international support, a rift with the Cambodian union movement and a concerted campaign of violence and intimidation that reached its apotheosis in a bloody grenade attack on a KNP protest in March 1997, she said. “Sam Rainsy did attempt to organise his supporters around a whole range of more concrete issues, but he was consistently blocked,” she said. “He organised a demonstration against corruption, and a grenade was thrown at it. He organised strikes in pursuit of a minimum-wage raise and was criticised by international organisations who said he shouldn’t interfere with unions.”
She added: “I don’t think we can blame the SRP for the weakness of the Cambodian political opposition when the government has worked consistently to reduce the political space for any kind of organised activism on any issue.”
A one-man show?
Others, however, said the party’s apparent difficulties stem from the erosion of its own internal democratic processes under the constant threat of defections and government intimidation.
The SRP organisation, Ou Virak said, is “like a scared child – the more things happen to them, the more they start to pull back. They refrain from meeting people and they refrain from opening up because of bad experiences”.
“There are some good people in the party that I know that cannot move up in the ranks,” he said. “There are some very good people who were left out.”
Ken Virak was a member of the SRP’s Steering Committee who left to form his own party – the People’s Power Party – in 2007, after becoming disillusioned with the SRP’s internal workings. He said the party had given up its role as a democratic opposition party “step by step”, and that the Steering Committee – nominally in charge of party decision-making – no longer had any real power.
“There is no democracy inside the party. Most of the decisions are made only by a minority of members who are powerful in the party and associated with Sam Rainsy,” he said.
Political decisions, originally made by a two-thirds majority vote of the Steering Committee, were watered down to a simple 50-percent-plus-one majority system and then to a system where the party president can in effect make every decision himself.
“I found that before every election, members of the party always broke away because of the political decision-making and partisanship,” he said.
Ou Virak said major decisions are now made by the party’s eight-member Permanent Committee, over which Sam Rainsy has final veto power.
Ken Virak still has faith in the opposition – refusing to run his new party in any elections in order not to cannibalise opposition votes – but said that all opposition groups, including the Human Rights Party and NRP, must unite if they want to have any chance at eating into the CPP’s majority in the 2013 polls.
Anti-communist roots
Born in Phnom Penh in 1949, Sam Rainsy grew up at a time of change and regeneration. His father, Sam Sary, was a key member of Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum government, but fell victim to the Prince’s security police after he was implicated in the so-called Bangkok Plot, an attempt to topple the government with the support of Thailand’s right-wing Marshal Sarit Thanarat. Sam Sary disappeared in 1962 and was presumed killed, possibly by the government. Shortly afterwards, Sam Rainsy’s mother, In Em, took the remaining family members to live in France, where he remained for the next three decades.
In a recent interview with the Post, Sam Rainsy described his father’s death as a “traumatising” experience, but said that Sam Sary’s political views permeated the family and set the trajectory of his own political development.
Certain pivotal events in Europe – notably, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 – were daily topics of conversation in the Sam household and went some way to forming the ideals that would grow into the SRP’s own brand of nationalism.
“When it came to Southeast Asia, my father was in favour of a strict neutrality – that Cambodia should not move closer to the communist world,” he said. “This has marked my background and my conviction that communism is oppressive – that freedom is essential and that we have to fight for [it],”
Sam Rainsy said that despite having been founded largely on his initiative in 1995, the KNP – renamed the SRP in 1998 because of legal disputes over the KNP name – had grown into an “organisation of its own”, linking Cambodia with Khmer communities abroad. He also downplayed his role as the party’s figurehead, referring to it as an “anachronistic” notion.
“If it was a one-man show, the show would have stopped a long time ago, given all the problems that we’ve been facing,” he said.
Speeding forward
Sam Rainsy said the SRP was the only party in Cambodia that holds organised elections from the grassroots, a system that is “just the opposite” of the CPP’s centrally controlled networks.
“They appoint their cadres – their apparatchiks – at the grassroots, but we are the only party that has organised elections,” he said.
Kimsour Phirith, a member of the SRP’s Permanent Committee, acknowledged that “internal disputes and misunderstandings”, as well as “competition at the leadership level”, had hurt the party at recent elections, but said the party is well aware of the problem and has worked to resolve it.
Similarly, the “loss” of the former Funcinpec vote was largely “due to intimidation and vote-buying in non-transparent elections”, Sam Rainsy said – a claim the opposition has made consistently since the July 2008 poll. “All of the over 13,000 powerful village chiefs are appointed by the ruling CPP, which is a heavily oppressive factor in a rural country like Cambodia. In the face of such pressure, virtually all Funcinpec leaders have sold out to the CPP,” he said.
When asked how the party might hope to erode the CPP’s entrenched network of patronage and make headway in rural areas, Sam Rainsy said current and future demographic changes were swinging the SRP’s way, a factor reflected in the party’s recent formation of a youth congress.
“In a typical family, you have the grandfather, who votes for Funcinpec; you have the father, who votes for the CPP; and you have the children, who when they reach voting age will vote for the SRP,” he said. “It will take less time than one might imagine now, because of the progress of technology, information, communication and education. History is accelerating.”
Sam Rainsy said that unlike CPP support – “bought” with party patronage benefits – each SRP ballot was a “politically conscious vote”, bringing with it a host of risks.
“The progressive concept of social justice is eroding the leniency towards the regressive patronage system. The younger generations will be the spearhead for this democratic trend moving Cambodia out of the Middle Ages,” he said.
Koul Panha, executive director of election monitor Comfrel, said Sam Rainsy retains a lot of political capital for taking such a principled stance against corruption in the 1990s and maintaining it consistently over the years since, but that fresh challenges are on the horizon.
“I think he still has that credibility. He resigned from a key position in government and showed he is that kind of politician,” he said. “The problem is how to communicate that credibility to the people.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VONG SOKHENG AND SAM RITH
--------
IN DATES
The growth of a movement
The growth of a movement
June 1992
Sam Rainsy returns to Cambodia from Europe, becoming a member of the interim Supreme National Council.
May 23, 1993
Sam Rainsy is elected as a Funcinpec lawmaker for Siem Reap in UN-backed polls that see a stunning royalist victory.
July 1993
Sam Rainsy is appointed minister for economics and finance in the CPP-Funcinpec coalition government.
October 20, 1994
Sam Rainsy is expelled from the cabinet following a major reshuffle.
May 13, 1995
Sam Rainsy is expelled from both Funcinpec and the National Assembly, and forms the Khmer Nation Party (KNP) later in the year.
March 30, 1997
Assassins throw grenades into a KNP rally outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, killing more than 16 and injuring scores of others. FBI investigators allege government involvement in the attack.
July 26, 1998
The KNP – now renamed the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) – performs well in the national elections, gaining 15 seats and winning 14.3 percent of the vote.
July 27, 2003
The SRP wins 24 National Assembly seats, or 21.9 percent of the vote, in national elections.
February 3, 2005
Sam Rainsy goes into self-exile after being accused of defamation and losing his parliamentary immunity at the hands of the National Assembly, along with fellow SRP lawmakers Chea Poch and Cheam Channy. Cheam Channy is arrested in February and tried in August 2005 for creating an illegal armed force. He is sentenced to seven years in prison, but is granted a royal pardon in February 2006.
December 22, 2005
Phnom Penh Municipal Court tries Sam Rainsy in absentia for defamation and sentences him to 18 months in prison and orders him to pay US$14,000 in fines and compensation.
February 5, 2006
Sam Rainsy receives a royal pardon at Prime Minister Hun Sen’s request, and returns to the country on February 10.
July 27, 2008
The SRP again wins 21.9 percent of the popular vote, but increases its share of National Assembly seats to 26.
February 26, 2009
The National Assembly votes to suspend Sam Rainsy’s immunity to force him to pay a fine levied against him by the National Election Committee. His immunity is restored on March 10.
June 22, 2009
The National Assembly votes to suspend the immunity of SRP lawmaker Mu Sochua after she filed a lawsuit accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of defamation. Lawmaker Ho Vann is also stripped of his immunity for allegedly belittling the educational credentials of senior military officers.
November 16, 2009
Parliament again lifts Rainsy’s immunity, following an incident in which he uprooted wooden markers at the border with Vietnam.
32 comments:
It's history for Sam Rainsy. He is done politically with Cambodian people. No other ways he can turn things around.
SRS, is the best for all khmers គណបក្សសមរង្ស៊ី គឺជាគណបក្សដែលមាន មនសិការជាតិ អាចធ្វើឲ្យប្រទេសកម្ពុជា មានប្រជាធិបតេយ្យពិតប្រាកដ ។ មានសមរង្ស៊ី គឺមានសង្ឃឹម មានសមរង្ស៊ី ហ៊ុន សែនគឺបាក់ស្បាត មានសមរង្ស៊ី ខ្មែរមានយុត្តិធម៌ មានសមរង្ស៊ី ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋតូចតាច មានជីវិត អត់សមរង្ស៊ី ប្រទេសខ្មែរ ត្រូវមិនហោច ។
You never win CPP and the World don't expect the opposition to win the election too. Never and never because CPP stole or changed the vote boxes every election. Secret Youn agent in Cambodia is in charge the election. Khmer workers in CPP changed the ballots so how can the SRP win the election.
Hun Sen just pretends to fool the world that Cambodia allows to have free and fair election, but they don't see behind the sceen.
The UN, US, and European keep Hun Sen in power and supply him with million of dollars to destroy democracy in Cambodia.
We only hope that God will strike CPP and its leaders one day. That is the only hope for Khmer people and her country. Or don't depend on God; only people revolution to turn Hun Sen up side down.
Let me repeat myself again and again: I respect Mr. Rainsy, but I don't think he will become a PM.
We can not use the principle of western democray in a country ruled by a party like CPP. We have to use different strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy requires a young and courageous leader who is not affraid to take bold measures.
Once again, Mr. Rainsy is a good individual, but he does not fit in that category of leader. Beside he is getting old too.
If Mr. Rainsy is really a patriotic, he should give his position to a new leader who is not afraid to challenge Mr. Hun Sen, eye-for-an-eye. Mr. Rainsy can still remain as an honarary chairman or founder of the party, but leave the day-to-day operations to the new leader, just like Ho Chi Minh did.
Yes, we all know those number are not actual truth. CPP CHEATS THE BALLOT!
I see different lights then this article. I don't like the current ruling govenment. Therefore, I support the opposition. As of today no party have the ability nor large enough to face the CPP. SO SRP IS AN EASY CHOICE FOR ME.
I know Mr. Sam Rainsy and SRP are not perfect. But who have helping and trying to help Cambodian vicitms then SRP. We all should already have realize that things in life are not perfect. No one can satisfied each and everyone. Sometime we just have to pick the best of what we have. THAT'S SRP!
Also people have to understand that the SRP organization have no national or international funds in running the party. It is soly on donation of supporters around the world. For all the hardship the organization have facing don't we all think they are doing more then possible? Especially constant threat and abuse fromt the CPP. Yet they continue to struggle and defending our people and nation. IF ALL OF YOU DON'T TOTALLY AGREE AT LEASE SHOULD THANKS THEM FOR ATTEMPING.
You all know things would be much worst with the opposition like SRP. Depending on HRP? Useless! They are coward. They have not done much or nothing at all to oppose CPP.
Enough said. Whoever critics SRP, can you name an organization that are strong enough to face CPP today? Can you name someone who have the will and guts more then Mr. Sam Rainsy to denfending our nation against CPP today?
None right? Then stop your critics! If you are in the same shoes as Mr. Sam Rainsy you would not have stand today. You would gave up living in France peacefully happy ever after. You all know it! I know it! Because I would. This is why I respects and thanks him for his will for Cambodia.
Correction to 2:13AM You all know things would be much worst WITHOUT the opposition like SRP. Depending on HRP? Useless! They are coward. They have not done much or nothing at all to oppose CPP.
What Sam Rainsy does is not important. Cambodia is another Kampuchea Krom in the near future. It is time to take Vietnamese lessons.
2:13AM,
I totally agree. I too support SRP because Hun Xen government have no ethics. They are dictator not leader.
Also CPP is all about corruptions. All about money into their individual pocket. All about power over poor citizens. This is not Democrats! Their head are not Khmer!
Hun Xen is a digraceful tyant of Cambodia history. I support all oppositions who benefiting in helping Cambodia to oppose Hun Xen government. But mainly SRP because they have more will.
2:19AM,
IF CAMBODIA WE BE THE NEST KAMPUCHEA KROM, LET IT BE!
IF KHMER HAVE TO SPEAK VIETNAMESE, LET IT BE!
BUT NOT MATTER WHAT, WE WILL DESTROY THE MASTER. NO MASTER CAN BE MASTER FOREVER.
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER!
SAM RAINSY IS THE MAN. HE IS KHMER TRUE HEROE. NOT HUN SEN, OR HANOI.
DON'T FORGET THAT 2:19 AM
I agree with 2:13AM.
We should support and help to improve SRP then critising. SRP is already established their grassroots.
Establish another party will not happen overnight. By the time we find someone and establish another party to be stronger then SRP today there would be no Cambodia left to defend. Think about it!
It would be more practicle to unite as unity to strenghten SRP.
2:43AM
Yes, that makes sense to support SRP! Since some people have found the week spot of the party they should help streghten it. But of course those people are just being sarcastic to make themselves feel better. They know they are not better. If they are they not the right person. If they are better and the right person and have strong will to save Cambodia they would put efforts into improvement then critising.
2:13Am, I'm 1:48AM and I like to respond to your comment with the good spirit for the well being of our nation.
Yes, I am criticizing Mr. Rainsy, not out of disrespect but in hope to see SRP grow stronger so that the lives of its supporters will not be at the mercy of CPP.
Mr. Rainsy needs to adopt a more agressive posture toward CPP, event that may lead to popular or armed revolt. No one will benefit from war, and no one understand that better than Mr. Hun Sen himself. But as long as Mr. Rainsy continues to play underdog, Mr. Hun Sen will continue to harass and kill SRP supportrs.
Either you fight back and you beg you opponent for mercy. The choice should be very obvious.
correction: Either you fight back OR you beg you opponent for mercy. The choice should be very obvious.
All scenarios, the past and the present,were made and manipulated by Hanoi. Hun Sen just did and does what ever Dictated by Hanoi to do.
Hanoi knew all Khmer Heads, peasants, intellects, kings alike
so Hanoi was and very flexible in manipulating to control Cambodia for EVER.
2:56AM,
I understand what you mean. To avoid misunderstanding you should adress as advice or suggestion; it is more possitive. Critising is a negative effect.
Also my comments was in general, not targeting you individually.
2:56 How can SRP fight back? The opposition have no military forces.
Reconsidere your thoughts again! Should you fight if you already know the result of loosing 100 percent. And will lead to hundreds of thousand maybe million death.
Mr. Sam Rainsy is brain not muscle. We don't need muscle we need strong constitution.
2:56 I understand what you really mean. It his very hard or impossible to talk to an uneducated mafia like Hun Xen. Therefore we tend to turn into agression. This is normal.
Another thing. Let me try put into short words. As of it is today, the opposition is loosing. We all understand that. Therefore, Mr. Sam Rainsy and SRP is playing not to win but try not to loose too much. You know what I mean?
Just like you playing basketball one on one against Labron James. No chance of winning. Every basket you made is just meaning you loose that much less.
THINGS DON'T ALWAYS EASY AS SAID.
Sam Rainsy just folowed his Father political footstep. Somedays Hun Sen eliminates his party as Sihanouk Eliminated other parties during SRN Era.
I think Sam Rainsy is done politically in Cambodia and 2013 election, even the beg, bow or leak CPP toes for mercy, because he fucked with CPP Founder.
More and More SRP will defect to CPP or HRP for safety nest and jobs security.
Hun Sen surely has a least Education, but he is so brillion idea and ideal to lead Cambodia for another 20-30 years to come.
For the most Educators have no idea or Ideal yet to lead Cambodia as well as Hun Sen. ok Let beat the election in 2013!
Here the Result 2013:
CPP will receive 109
SPR will receive 10
NRP will receive 2
Fun will receive 1
HRP will receive 1
Mark my world for it!
4:02 AM,
You are perfectly correct. Sam Rainsy is no better than his father Sam Sary. He is done!
One group of Khmers said that Hun Sen is smart while the other group of Khmers said that Sam Rainsy is smart. Let's prove it through debate on national TV between the two by letting the audiences who are randomly selected to ask questions. Once the debate is done we should let the viewers across Cambodia to rate them.
how can hun sen do that to wast his time? he is always smart under ho chi minh's ball.
2:37AM, "WE WILL DESTROY THE MASTER"
We will "destroy the master" by sitting around in our houses in Long Beach and typed wishful thoughts in all caps letters?
What planet are you from, 2:37AM?
No wonder why Cambodia is becoming another Kampuchea Krom.
5:32AM,
Hun Xen will not accept the debate. Everyone one including Hun Xen knows he have no chance of winning. Have you ever listen to Hun Xen speeches? I bet he can't even professionally debate a 12 year old child. Everyone know what I mean.
I am 100% agree with 5:32 AM and 6:45 AM.
Democratic Kampuchea Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Regime had committed:
Tortures
Brutality
Executions
Massacres
Mass Murder
Genocide
Atrocities
Crimes Against Humanity
Starvations
Slavery
Force Labour
Overwork to Death
Human Abuses
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime had committed:
Attempted Murders
Attempted Murder on Chea Vichea
Attempted Assassinations
Attempted Assassination on Sam Rainsy
Assassinations
Assassinated Journalists
Assassinated Political Opponents
Assassinated Leaders of the Free Trade Union
Assassinated over eighty members of Sam Rainsy Party.
"But as of today, over eighty members of my party have been assassinated. Countless others have been injured, arrested, jailed, or forced to go into hiding or into exile."
Sam Rainsy LIC 31 October 2009 - Cairo, Egypt
Executions
Executed members of FUNCINPEC Party
Murders
Murdered Chea Vichea
Murdered Ros Sovannareth
Murdered Hy Vuthy
Murdered Khim Sambo
Murdered Khim Sambo's son
Murdered members of Sam Rainsy Party.
Murdered activists of Sam Rainsy Party
Murdered Innocent Men
Murdered Innocent Women
Murdered Innocent Children
Killed Innocent Khmer Peoples.
Extrajudicial Execution
Grenade Attack
Terrorism
Drive by Shooting
Brutalities
Police Brutality Against Monks
Police Brutality Against Evictees
Tortures
Intimidations
Death Threats
Threatening
Human Abductions
Human Abuses
Human Rights Abuses
Human Trafficking
Drugs Trafficking
Under Age Child Sex
Corruptions
Bribery
Illegal Arrest
Illegal Mass Evictions
Illegal Land Grabbing
Illegal Firearms
Illegal Logging
Illegal Deforestation
Illegally use of remote detonation on Sokha Helicopter, while Hok Lundy and other military officials were on board.
Illegally Sold State Properties
Illegally Removed Parliamentary Immunity of Parliament Members
Plunder National Resources
Acid Attacks
Turn Cambodia into a Lawless Country.
Oppression
Injustice
Steal Votes
Bring Foreigners from Veitnam to vote in Cambodia for Cambodian People's Party.
Use Dead people's names to vote for Cambodian People's Party.
Disqualified potential Sam Rainsy Party's voters.
Abuse the Court as a tools for CPP to send political opponents and journalists to jail.
Abuse of Power
Abuse the Laws
Abuse the National Election Committee
Abuse the National Assembly
Violate the Laws
Violate the Constitution
Violate the Paris Accords
Impunity
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Death in custody.
Under the Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime, no criminals that has been committed crimes against journalists, political opponents, leaders of the Free Trade Union, innocent men, women and children have ever been brought to justice.
I agree with Mr. Ou Virak's assessment of the SRP.
I know some good people in the SRP who have never gone up the party ranks. They ended up leaving the SRP.
I also know some corrupt people who ended up becoming PM in the SRP.
SRP has a good vision, but it never do what it wants to do. At the end, money is the most important criteria in choosing who will head the list of SRP election list.
Mr. Sam Rainsy is smart. But he should have some principle. I look at the way he do politics. It reminds me of a trader with Societé Général, a French Investment Bank, or a stock market dealer.
Cambodians are fed up with nice speech, but want to see concrete actions.
I used to witness how Mr. Sam Rainsy was involved in logging when he was Finance Minister. During a meeting with a Western oil company, his telephone rang. He ordered to his subordinate in French to allow his logging trucks to pass he border. He did not realize that I also speak French.
After he went into opposiion, he proposed that politician should declare their assets. He declared that he had US$5 million.
Nothing is perfect in this world
Jeldres's statement is accurate but selective. Did he know that Bangkok was built based on Lao and Khmer forced slave labour ? And ccounting.
What is a leader? A leader cannot be the same everywhere. Cambodia needs a strong leader to rule over the generals. Without that you cannot have peace. Just look at Afghanistan. Cambodia and Afghanistan was similar in the 1980s. Afghanitan received more aid than Cambodia at that time.
You look at the United States the 1950s and 60s, espcially the witchhunt during the McCathy years. How the US was involved in killing in South America. Kissinger cannot go to Spain, he will be arrested.
This is just to show that in the past US leaders were not perfect. Otherwise the world is in full harmony.
We don't need a leader to can win debate. We need a Leader to can do concrete things. A leader should not know everything, but should have good advisers, who can offer good policies and have them implemented.
We had enough of nice speech, but nothing has been done. It is also easier to talk than to do. This is Cambodia's paradox.
What is a leader? A leader cannot be the same everywhere. Cambodia needs a strong leader to rule over the generals. Without that you cannot have peace. Just look at Afghanistan. Cambodia and Afghanistan was similar in the 1980s. Afghanitan received more aid than Cambodia at that time.
You look at the United States the 1950s and 60s, espcially the witchhunt during the McCathy years. How the US was involved in killing in South America. Kissinger cannot go to Spain, he will be arrested.
This is just to show that in the past US leaders were not perfect. Otherwise the world is in full harmony.
We don't need a leader to can win debate. We need a Leader to can do concrete things. A leader should not know everything, but should have good advisers, who can offer good policies and have them implemented.
We had enough of nice speech, but nothing has been done. It is also easier to talk than to do. This is Cambodia's paradox.
9:17, only dumb peoples would believe your lies.
6:30,
you are so stupid. you think everyone from long beach.
The world and khmer are not just in long beach. you bitch. lol
right on 4:02 and 9:17
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