Cambodia lawmakers approve law threatening opposition party
AP / Sacramento Bee | 20 February 2017
Cambodia's legislature amended a law governing political parties on Monday to allow the government to apply to the courts to have a party dissolved, an act clearly aimed at the sole opposition group in parliament.
The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party boycotted Monday's 90-minute debate on the legislation and the subsequent vote that saw all 66 lawmakers from the ruling Cambodian People's Party vote in favor. It now needs approval from the ruling party-controlled Senate, a simple formality.
Long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen suggested the amendments earlier this month, in what is seen as an attempt to shore up his party's strength ahead of local elections this year and a general election in 2018. The opposition staged an unexpectedly strong challenge in 2013's general election.
The new provisions will allow the Supreme Court to dissolve parties whose leaders have criminal convictions, and bar those same leaders from political activities for five years. Critics charge that Cambodia's courts are under the political influence of the ruling party.
In addition, the Interior Ministry will be allowed to suspend parties whose activities incite national disintegration, a catch-all clause similar to those in other laws that are used against the government's critics.
"The passage of these amendments marks the final consolidation of absolute power in the hands of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People's Party," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"Hun Sen's election strategy is clear: bulldoze what's left of Cambodia's democratic institutions by using laws like this one, while simultaneously intimidating civil society into silence with arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders and threats to de-register troublesome NGOs," Robertson said.
The Cambodia National Rescue Party, in a statement issued before the debate, said the changes violated the principles of liberal and multiparty democracy.
"The proposal of the amendments was done too quickly and with the aim of intimidating and destroying the rival party," said the opposition statement.
There were political consequences even before the amendment was passed, with longtime opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who has been in self-imposed exile since late 2015, resigning from the Cambodia National Rescue Party because he was convicted in one defamation case and has several other cases pending.
Hun Sen's government in the past year has put increasing legal pressure on its critics and political opponents, keeping them tied up in court, sending them fleeing into exile, or sometimes jailing them.
National Assembly spokesman Leng Peng Long said the purpose of the amendment was to ensure fairness for all parties.
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