CPP wants leash on watchdogs

The ruling party wants “biased” election watchdogs to be on a tight leash by the next election and wants the opposition to agree to it, senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Cheam Yeap said yesterday ahead of the third meeting of a bipartisan election reform committee this morning.
Despite mudslinging between the ruling and opposition parties last week that at one point saw Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Sam Rainsy pledge to walk away from talks and hold more demonstrations, the CPP has agreed to discuss the opposition’s key demand of National Election Committee reform, Yeap said.
But in return, the ruling party wants election-monitoring NGOs, whose documenting of poll irregularities bolstered the opposition’s rejection of the July election, to come under increased scrutiny via a long-gestating law on NGOs and associations.
On Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Bin Chhin, head of the CPP’s negotiating team, replied to a letter from his opposition counterpart, Son Chhay, agreeing that the “reform of electoral institutions” could be added to the election reform framework the committee is tasked with preparing.
He added, however, that the “neutrality and honesty of civil society groups [working on] election” would also have to be on the table.
The CPP had already raised the issue during last week’s meet, but it was dismissed by the CNRP’s Chhay as “ridiculous”.
Yesterday, Yeap confirmed that his party wanted the NGO law to specifically target the neutrality of election watchdogs.
“I would like to inform [the public] that a number of civil society groups were involved in election observation. They alleged that irregularities occurred and protested that we had robbed the ballots. Therefore, we want to create a law that ensures their neutrality,” he stated.
“I won’t name them, but some civil society groups have taken sides and become a tool of the opposition party or even played a more active role against the ruling party than the opposition [does].”
Earlier this month, a senior Interior Ministry official told the Post that civil society groups would no longer be consulted on the NGO law.
In January, the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit released a booklet addressing findings made by the Electoral Reform Alliance, an umbrella group of election watchdogs, in a post-election report.
“It is clear that the authors of the Joint-Report are talented experts having knowledge concerning elections and experience in tricky writing to mislead readers concerning the electoral process,” it said, adding that, conspicuously, the report was released at the same time the CNRP decided to hold daily demonstrations.
“It was produced to discredit the 2013 electoral process by manipulations and fabrications, aiming to bring its readers to view the electoral system in Cambodia as not fair … misleading the public into believing that this is the reason behind the CNRP’s loss.”
Preap Kol, executive director at Transparency International Cambodia (TIC), a key contributor to the ERA report, said yesterday that he was “surprised that the CPP considers [this issue] equally important as the reform of the [NEC]”.
While NGOs like TIC are bound by principles of transparency and integrity that guarantee their financial funding, he said that a “small number of NGOs might have a political agenda”.
But Kol added that the government’s focus on the NGO law at this time implied a clear agenda on its part “to suppress civil society organisations”.
Hang Puthea, executive director of election monitoring group NICFEC, also a contributing member to the ERA, said that he welcomed an NGO law that would crack down on errant organisations, because he was confident that the ERA groups were all impartial.
Meanwhile, the CNRP’s Chhay said he hoped that the CPP would stop “playing around” in today’s discussions by outlining all the issues they want to reform, even if that includes the “irrelevant” NGO law, so the committee can push forward.
“I want them to put it all on the table.… We aren’t going to waste our time arguing with them what issues are for discussion or not.… Put everything and take all those issues to debate at a workshop,” he said.
He added, however, that any public consultation would dismiss NGO impartiality as a non-issue.
“The CPP have a kind of a problem regarding any organisations who dare to find the facts about the wrongdoing of this government. To report on this is [to be] considered as the enemy.”

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Prince’s party progressing

Former Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh made his bid to return to politics official yesterday, signing papers to be sent to the Ministry of Interior today to seek registration and recognition for his new political party.
In a closed-door meeting with around 300 supporters in Phnom Penh’s Sunway Hotel, Ranariddh signed the papers, which he will send to Interior Minister Sar Kheng so that his new Community of Royalist People’s Party (CRPP) can take part in the next election.
In a press conference after the meeting, Ranariddh, who ruled in a coalition government with Prime Minister Hun Sen from 1993 to 1997, said he is returning to politics because the Cambodian People’s Party and Cambodia National Rescue Party are failing to find solutions to the country’s problems.
“The party A, I will not join; the party B, I also will not join. But I have always prepared [my]self to work with any party that has [a] vision to resolve national problems the same as my party [does],” Ranariddh said.
The one-time political arch-rival of Hun Sen hit out at CNRP leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha for posing a threat to the “royalist regime” and urged the opposition to take its seats in the National Assembly.
“I dare to say … that if he [Rainsy] is elected … he would end the royalist regime,” Ranariddh said.
CNRP vice president Kem Sokha scoffed at the rhetoric.
“We will not [listen to] his ideas, citizens also will not allow us to [listen to] his ideas,” Sokha said.
Political analyst Kem Ley said that Ranariddh’s “unclear politics” when he was in power will stand in the way of the success of the new party and that the only way for him to return would be to join the CNRP.
CNRP lawmaker-elect Yim Sovann agreed.
“There are only two political parties in the country … it will stay this way,” he said, adding that the creation of the party will not stand in the way of the CNRP’s goals. “We [the CNRP] are in their hearts. They [the CRPP] have the right to form a party and people have the right to choose the CNRP.”

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Pol Pot’s daughter weds

To a passing stranger, the distant sound of music may have hinted at just another celebration in a typically busy wedding season fast drawing to a close.
But this was no ordinary wedding. The biggest crowd that some villagers could ever recall seeing in Banteay Meanchey’s Malai district was gathered yesterday to witness the wedding of a woman whose genealogy will forever remain notorious across the country and, indeed, the world.
Pol Pot’s daughter, Sar Patchata, was getting married.
Rows of luxury cars lined a field in Malai commune’s Kbal Spean village, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold. Assembled inside the wedding party were officials from as far away as Phnom Penh. Alongside them were former Khmer Rouge soldiers who had travelled a much shorter distance to attend and whose friendships with each other went back decades.
“It’s a good opportunity,” said Ros Ka, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who spent years fighting with forces loyal to Pol Pot and who was enjoying the chance to see some of his former comrades for the first time in years. “We can meet with the seniors after we have lived apart for years. You don’t know how delighted we are.”
Not everyone could make it to this reunion, he added, because they simply couldn’t afford the journey.
Patchata, 26, is the only daughter of Pol Pot, the former Khmer Rouge leader responsible for an estimated 1.7 million deaths during Democratic Kampuchea’s brutal agrarian-based dictatorship of 1975 to 1979.
Patchata’s mother, Mea Son, married Pol Pot – whose real name was Saloth Sar – in the mid 1980s after he fled Phnom Penh and was waging bloody war from the Cambodian-Thai border.
Following Pol Pot’s death in 1998 while under house arrest, Son, then 40, told the Post that the brutal dictator had treated her and his only daughter, then known as Mea Sith, well right until the end.
“He was a good husband to me; we met in 1985,” she said. “I am very sad that he has died and I do not know what the future may bring.”
The future was equally uncertain for Patchata. Photos at the time showed a young girl’s grief as she stood beside her mother and her father’s jailer, staring through a long black fringe. Yesterday, that same face – which bears a resemblance to her father’s – beamed as the cameras captured her at every turn.

Family and friends sit in a circle around Sar Patchata (right)

 and Sy Vicheka during their wedding in Banteay

 Meanchey’s Malai district yesterday.

Tep Khunnal, a former Malai district governor, adviser to Pol Pot and member of the Khmer Rouge delegation to the UN in the 1980s, married Patchata’s mother after the dictator’s death, and brought them to live in the district.
“Khunnal has raised her since she was 10 after Pol Pot died,” said Chen Nat, one of Khunnal’s colleagues.
After earning a master’s degree in English literature in Malaysia, where she met her Cambodian husband-to-be Sy Vicheka, Patchata returned to her home three years before the wedding, Nat said.
“She said she will not go to live or work anywhere else now and will stay here to run her uncle and aunt’s rice mill.”
Suong Sikoeun, a former spokesman and high-ranking official in the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the Democratic Kampuchea era, said those who attended the wedding yesterday remained part of a strong community.
“It’s not a meeting of politics,” he said. “It is a show of friendship … [Pol Pot’s] daughter is not mired in politics. We love and respect each other as one and help one another.”
The celebrations had all the pomp expected of a Cambodian wedding. Just after dawn, couples with trays of fruit formed a procession that slowly made its way to the bride’s house.
Wedding guest Meas Chey spoke of her connection with the bride. Just days after Patchata was born, Chey gave birth to a child in the same camp hospital as Pol Pot’s wife.
“I don’t know her very well anymore,” she said. “When she finished high school, she went to study in Phnom Penh. But I know she is … very different from her father.”
By the afternoon, friends and relatives were offering the married couple thousands of dollars in cash and gifts – Son offered her daughter a gold necklace – as the couple prepared for a new life together.

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Fifteen ‘gunned down’

Twelve Cambodians were shot dead by Thai security forces on March 5 after illegally crossing the border from Choam Ksan district in Preah Vihear province to log timber, Cambodian officials said yesterday.
Another three illegal loggers were killed on Wednesday and two others are still missing, military officials added.
Preap Thoeurth, a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) intelligence officer at the border in Preah Vihear, said that Thai soldiers fatally shot 15 loggers near tiny Chheu Teal Kong village over the past two weeks, beginning with the carnage of March 5.
“This is the fourth or fifth time already that the Thai military fired at loggers so far this year,” he said. “Most of them are migrant villagers from Kampot and Kampong Speu.”
Another logger, who had crossed into Thailand on February 28, was sent back across the border by Thai forces on Wednesday, he added.
Pen Song, deputy military commander in Preah Vihear, confirmed the death tally, calling it “one of the biggest [fatal shooting] incidents” in memory, and accused the Thai military of breaching an agreement between the two sides not to use deadly force against loggers.
“When there is a meeting [with the Thai military], we always ask them to not shoot at the people while they cross the border,” he said. “We ask them to make arrests and fine [them], but they are never careful.”
Song added that local villagers are often turned back by RCAF border patrols, but migrant workers from other provinces often slip past them, hiding in forest and sneaking across the border.
Major General Phat Sophen, chief of the Cambodian-Thai Border Relations Office in Preah Vihear, said that he was informed of the shootings of loggers, but had not received confirmation from the Thais.
“I heard the information about the shooting,” he said. “But Thailand has yet to inform the Cambodian authorities about the shootings. Previously, if there is a shooting of Cambodian people, they [the Thai military] have sent information to us.”
Sophen added that his office received a letter from the Thai side on March 8 stating that they had arrested a Cambodian villager and he would face legal action, but the letter made no mention of an incident involving live fire.
Another deputy military commander for Preah Vihear, Colonel Meas Yoeun, said that soldiers under his watch had told him what happened.
“They used to climb a mountain in Kampot to collect resin [from trees], but when they came here and climbed the mountain for logging, they faced something horrible,” he said. “They knew that it was risky, but if they could cut some logs and bring them back, it would be like they had farmed land for a year.”
Preah Vihear coordinator for rights group Adhoc Lor Chan said that he received information about the shooting, but did not know exactly how many people were shot.
He urged the families of the victims to file complaints to his office so that he could write to the authorities to intervene.
“I just know there is a shooting, but do not have the details,” he said. “The victims are poor people, so they take risks to cross … with a guarantee from some officials that they will be safe – that’s why they take the risk.”
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday referred questions about the incident to the military. The Thai military commander overseeing border affairs had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
At least 69 Cambodians were shot dead by Thai security forces last year, while 165 people were arrested or detained, according to the Ministry of Interior.
Ou Virak, an activist and former president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said that, if the details of the shootings were confirmed, the Thai government should be held to account under international law.
“So many people have been dying in a similar fashion. It’s a serious, serious, human rights issue,” he said. “It’s a serious violation of international law, and the Thais need to be responsible and investigate, to make sure it won’t happen again.”
“Nobody deserves to die, to be shot for illegal logging. They need to try to address this from an international law perspective, and the Thai government needs to be held to account.… If they cannot, Thailand will become a failed state.”

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