Plea to world’s parliamentarians: Help save Cambodian democracy
I appeal to the representatives of 173 parliaments now gathered in St Petersburg at the 137th Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly, for their help to save the principle of parliamentary representation in Cambodia.
In Cambodia’s National Assembly, the 123 deputies are divided between two political organisations, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, which has 68 seats, and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which has 55 seats.
New legislative elections are scheduled for July 2018 and independent observers are in agreement that, in the light of growing popular discontent, the opposition will make further advances, which have every prospect of bringing it to power and ending the uninterrupted 38-year rule of the CPP.
At this crucial juncture, the government last month arrested and imprisoned the head of the CNRP, the leader of the opposition, Kem Sokha, based on claims of “national treason” and “sedition to overturn the government”. In recent days, Hun Sen further announced the dissolution of the CNRP, based on the same logic.
The CPP and the government have recently amended laws on political parties and elections to give themselves the right to dissolve the CNRP at any moment, safe in the knowledge that the police and the courts are at their behest.
The dissolution of the CNRP will mean that its 55 democratically elected deputies will automatically and collectively lose their parliamentary mandate created by universal suffrage. This constitutes a grave breach of Cambodia’s commitment to democracy created and guaranteed by the Paris Peace Agreement, signed under the aegis of the United Nations in 1991.
The anti-democratic accusations and actions of the government against the CNRP have been condemned by the United Nations, the European Parliament and governments around the world, as well as by many human rights organisations.
As a representative of the Cambodian people elected and re-elected since 1993, and a former leader of the opposition who is now in forced exile, I respectfully ask for the support of the world’s parliamentarians to help their elected colleagues in the CNRP and defend the very principle of parliamentary representation.
