The Cambodian Supreme Court yesterday dissolved the main opposition party, leaving authoritarian Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen clear to extend more than three decades in power in a general election next year.
The government had asked the court to dissolve the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was accused of plotting to take power with help from the US after the arrest of party leader Kem Sokha on Sept. 3.
The court ruling also imposed a five-year political ban on 118 members of the party.
Photo: AP
It had posed a major election challenge to Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is the world’s longest serving prime minister.
In a televised address, Hun Sen told Cambodians the election would go ahead “as normal” and called on CNRP members who had not been banned to defect to his party.
The CNRP rejected the accusations against it as politically motivated.
It did not send lawyers for the court ruling.
“It shows that Hun Sen will never stop if no one is stopping him,” said Kem Monovithya, the daughter of Kem Sokha and also a party official. “The verdict is expected. It’s time for sanctions from the international community.”
Western donors, who sponsored elections overseen by the UN in 1993 in the hope of founding an enduring democracy, had called for Kem Sokha’s release, but they have shown no appetite for sanctions against the Cambodian government, which is now closely allied to China.
Despite ramping up anti-US rhetoric and linking the US to the alleged plot against him, Hun Sen lauded US President Donald Trump at the APEC leaders’ summit in Vietnam last week and said he welcomed his policy of non-interference.
Dozens of police officers manned barriers outside the gold ornamented court in the center of Phnom Penh.
There was no sign of protests.
Few people on the streets wanted to talk about the ruling, the latest chapter in decades of maneuvering that have kept Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party in power across all levels in the nation of 16 million.
“People are scared to talk amongst themselves,” said Seang Menly, 39, a tuk-tuk driver. “In my neighborhood, people who used to give money and food to the CNRP no longer dare to.”
Rights groups condemned the decision by the court, which is headed by a judge who is a member of the ruling party’s permanent committee.
They said it left Cambodia as a de facto one-party state and rendered next year’s election meaningless.
“The misuse of the courts to dissolve the CNRP is one of the gravest threats to human rights and representative democracy modern Cambodia has seen,” said Kingsley Abbot of the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Commission of Jurists.
More than half the CNRP’s lawmakers have already fled Cambodia, fearing detention in a crackdown on Hun Sen’s critics.
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