Cambodia : Red Alert « Cambodia National Rescue Party

June 8, 2013

Cambodia : Red Alert

HUN SEN PROVOKES CIVIL WAR

On June 6, 2013, by expelling all opposition deputies from the National Assembly and in proclaiming, arbitrarily and illegally, the end of their mandates based on universal suffrage, Prime Minister Hun Sen has created the preconditions for a civil war.

The Peace Agreements signed in Paris on October 23, 1991 guarantee for Cambodia a political regime based on “liberal and pluralist democracy” resulting from “free and fair elections. ”

However, less than two months away from legislative elections set for July 28, 2013, Mr. Hun Sen has decided to simply do away with the parliamentary opposition and to relieve himself of the burden of any pretense of democracy. This has exposed a totalitarian, single-party regime which openly breaches the Paris Peace Agreements.

Following this institutional coup d’état, the National Assembly is in breach of the Constitution, and the government of Mr. Hun Sen is operating outside the law.

This resort to force is all the more grave in the light of the persistant refusal of Mr. Hun Sen to follow the recommendations of the United Nations concerning the reforms needed to ensure “free and fair elections. ”

Faced with this situation of exceptional seriousness, the international community must condemn Cambodia’s totalitarian drift more firmly than ever, as well as the farce that any election that fails to take into account the United Nations recommendations represents. It must refuse to recognize any government resulting from such an election.

Even if the parliamentary opposition represented by the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) takes part in the coming ballot, to avoid the development of a political void, and to show the failure of an unjust electoral system to halt the opposition’s advance, it will seek the cancellation of any election which does not take into account the recommendations of the United Nations and which distorts the will of the Cambodian people.

Mr Hun Sen’s resort to force means that Cambodia faces a period of uncertainty and instability which could lead to the civil war that he himself has threatened to stage.

Sam Rainsy

CNRP President