With bylaw approved, CNRP to pick deputies

March 2, when former deputy Kem Sokha ascended to the party presidency after the resignation of ex-leader Sam Rainsy. Weeks later, however, the Ministry of Interior claimed their selections were illegitimate because they had breached a clause of the CNRP’s own bylaws – while ignoring that those bylaws had been amended at the very same congress.

The ministry later accepted the new bylaws, and Sokha’s new role as president – but only after the CNRP withdrew a slogan that had displeased the ruling CPP by urging voters to “replace the commune chiefs who serve party”.

On the same day the offending slogan was dropped, April 2, the CNRP reaffirmed its support of the new leadership in a letter to the Interior Ministry. However, in yet another reversal , the government then claimed that the deputies’ official selection date was now April 2, rendering it illegitimate as it fell outside of the party bylaws’ stipulated 30-day window for replacing leadership.

The CNRP amended its bylaws once again to remove the time limit on April 25.

Now that those amendments have been accepted, the party must still renominate the three deputy president candidates.

Deputy-elect Eng Chhay Eang said yesterday that the party will try to get its central committee together as soon as possible to endorse the three deputies.

“We still have to choose the time because our leaders are in the grassroots [areas] or on missions,” he said. “

Political commentator Meas Ny said it was difficult to predict whether this would be the end of the CNRP’s troubles with the ministry, given that the latter had chosen to turn what should have been a small issue into a two-month-long slog.

“I think it was a political game to prevent the CNRP from focusing on the elections,” he said. “And the CNRP did not expect that the CPP will make this into an issue.”

HONG MENEA Chroy Changvar community representative Chea Sophat leads a protest yesterday against the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation, which is building a satellite city that would see residents lose the majority of their land on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar Peninsula.

PHA LINA CNRP members raise their hands in support of the party’s new statute at an extraordinary congress last month in Phnom Penh.