Left to rigth: Mam Sonando, Kem Sokha and Ou Virak
Monday, April 28, 2008By Kessor Raniya
Radio Free AsiaTranslated from Khmer by Heng Soy"I believe that all these parties which were formed separately, was because they each believe that each one of them is better than the rest, and others want to form a political party only just to unite with others, but they demand conditions or good positions for themselves and their party members only. Therefore, in these cases, sometimes, they don’t even have human resource or anything else, but, they form a party to give themselves more value than they were before" - Ou Virak, CCHR President
During a public forum, Mam Sonando, the Beehive radio station director reported on the station at the end of last week a number of conditions set by Kem Sokha, HRP party president, which he (Mam Sonando) finds impossible to meet, such as the name of the party cannot be that of an individual.
Mam Sonando said (to Kem Sokha): “You declared that you are open to the unification, however, you have set pre-conditions for the unification with other parties, such as the condition that (other) parties must have a term limit for the party president, not just for the prime minister. And among your other conditions, there is another point saying that the party name must not bear the name of an individual. Right now, I see that you want to unite with the Sam Rainsy Party and the Norodom Ranariddh Party, both of which bear the name of individuals. You know that what you declared, there are conditions which affect these two parties, i.e. they should not bear the name of individuals, and if you are open to the unification, and you already know that these two parties all bear the name of individuals,
what result will your declaration bring?”
In response to this question, Kem Sokha, who participated in the forum on Thursday, said that these conditions are negotiable: “For the conditions you raised, they are conditions which our members want to obtain, but during the negotiations, there will be bargaining also. They reduce some (of their demands), we add some of ours, they add some back, then there will be an outcome. However, what does this (HRP) party want? We want a political party that sets two term limits for the party president at most. The HRP wants a party that bears no individual’s name. This means that after the unification, we will not adopt the name of an individual. We must set the term limit for the party president, and the party president must declare his/her wealth, these are the conditions we want, but that’s what we want, however, if there is any discussion, we can still make bargains.”
Mam Sonando indicated that a number of people sent him requests to (help) form a unity among the democrats to compete in the upcoming general election.
Based on these requests, Mam Sonando wrote letters inviting 5 party representatives to display their political standings. These parties are: the SRP, the NRP, the HRP, Funcinpec and the Democratic Alliance party.
Mrs. Mu Sochua, SRP deputy secretary-general, welcomes the idea of unification, however she apologized that the SRP was not able to attend the program because it is busy with activities at the local levels, and it does not have sufficient time to reflect on this idea. She said that this idea originated from the SRP who issued its declaration about this issue since long ago.
Nevertheless, there seems to be no path leading to this unification. Mrs. Mu Sochua called on the people to join the SRP during the upcoming general election: “We think about it over and over again, besides discussing with other parties for the unification, right now, we don’t see any further resolution that can take place. Therefore, we call on the voters to let them know that the change lies in their hands, and in order not to break up the votes for the democrats, only the voters can do it. The SRP has more than 1 million supporters, we have our own policy, we have a clean leader, i.e. President Sam Rainsy who can provide solutions for the people on three issues: a solution for job (creation) for the people, a solution for the rising price of gasoline and the rising price of fertilizers, everything remain expensive, and most importantly, (a solution for) the healthcare for the people.”
Regarding all the issues above, Ou Virak, President of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) who is also an observer of the political situation in Cambodia, said that he has no hope that there could be any political unification with all the present difficulties during face-to-face discussions on the airwaves.
He added that any unification just to divide power, and if there is no honest unification goals among the parties, then such unification will kill the nation and it would simply be a joke that looks down on the voters only. “I believe that all these parties which were formed separately, was because they each believe that each one of them is better than the rest, and others want to form a political party only just to unite with others, but they demand conditions or good positions for themselves and their party members only. Therefore, in these cases, sometimes, they don’t even have human resource or anything else, but, they form a party to give themselves more value that they were before. Regarding this unification, in general, there is a true will to unite, and there were secret talks behind the public. However, if these politicians are called in to discuss (the unification) on radio, I have no confidence that they will participate. Furthermore, the unification without conditions is also difficult to talk about, because if we keep on uniting, it could happen, but after the unification, it’s done only to destroy the nation…”
