Highest court dissolves CNRP
Act renders Cambodia ‘a one-party state’
PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s highest court on Thursday dissolved the main opposition party, eliminating the most popular and viable challenger to the country’s authoritarian leader before elections next year.
Human rights groups and the United Nations said the decision to shutter the Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, would render the country essentially a one-party state, ending its postKhmer Rouge experiment with pluralistic democracy.
The ruling followed a lawsuit filed last month by the government against the opposition, asserting that it was involved in a US-backed plot to overthrow the Cambodian People’s Party and its powerful leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen.
In announcing the ruling, Dith Munty, the chief judge of the Supreme Court, said, “It is a serious crime, so the party will be dissolved according to Article 38 of the Law on Political Parties.” The judge is also a high-ranking member of the governing party and a close associate of Hun Sen. There is no right to appeal.
The decision, which will see scores of opposition officials barred from politics and their party stripped of its parliamentary seats, was the culmination of a crackdown in which the opposition leader was jailed, media outlets closed and activists harassed, with a particular focus on groups linked to the United States.
The International Commission of Jurists, a nongovernmental rights group, said the hearing and Munty’s role in it made “a mockery of justice”.
“The Supreme Court is irreparably interfering with the rights of potentially millions of Cambodians to freely choose their political representatives and vote for them in the upcoming elections,” said Kingsley Abbott, the group’s senior legal adviser in Southeast Asia.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, warned last month that the dissolution of the opposition would be a dangerous move toward one-party rule, saying it “would affect Cambodians’ voice and choice at all levels of government”.
The opposition has insisted that the charges of sedition are spurious, and that its activities have been aimed only at winning national elections and forming a legitimate government. It did not send a lawyer to Thursday’s hearing, saying that there was no use contesting what appeared to be a foregone conclusion.
Hun Sen has spent the past month publicly boasting about the opposition party’s imminent elimination. In an address last week, he set odds of 1 to 100 that the CNRP would be dissolved, and urged Cambodians to place cash bets at noodle shops.
The push to eliminate the opposition has coincided with a turn away from the West, which had long kept the Cambodian government in check with aid that had conditions for democratization.
Nonetheless, Hun Sen has expressed a personal affinity for President Donald Trump that seems to transcend his antipathy for the United States. On Monday, at a summit in Manila for Southeast Asian leaders, the two posed for a photograph — Mr Trump giving a big thumbs-up — and Hun Sen gave a gushing speech in which he said, “I don’t know if you are like me, or I am like you”.
Hun Sen also praised what he called Mr Trump’s lack of interest in human rights and interventionism, and suggested that the State Department and the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, were not appropriately implementing the Trump “policy line”.
On Thursday, t he White House expressed “grave concern” about the dissolution of the opposition party and said the United States would withdraw financial support for Cambodia’s 2018 elections. “On current course next year’s election will not be legitimate, free or fair,” it said in a statement.
The European Union threatened to exclude Cambodia from a program that gives impoverished countries tariff-free access to its markets, which has been highly beneficial to Cambodia’s garment industry.
The Cambodia National Rescue Party, formed in 2012, has garnered widespread popularity with a blend of rights-oriented liberalism, economic populism and antiVietnamese nationalism. It has been welcomed by many simply as a fresh choice in a country that has been led by Hun Sen’s party in some form since 1979.
In general elections in 2013 and in local elections in June, the CNRP nearly matched the popular vote tally of the governing party, which had maintained tight control over local political networks, the military and the judiciary. Significantly, the opposition party took control of a third of local administrative bodies across Cambodia in the elections in June.
A little more than a month after that vote, Hun Sen began one of his harshest crackdowns in years.
Forty-four of the opposition party’s lawmakers have fled the country since early September. Of the 11 remaining, two are in prison, including the party’s leader, Kem Sokha, charged with treason and accused of spearheading a plot.
Hundreds of local officials have been targeted by the crackdown, in which Hun Sen pressed them to join his party or face serious consequences. Some have reported being detained until they agreed.
In August, the National Democratic Institute, an American nonprofit group, was expelled from Cambodia, and Radio Free Asia, run by the US government, was shut down for alleged tax offenses.
Late Tuesday, two of Radio Free Asia’s former employees in Phnom Penh were arrested, accused of continuing to work covertly for the broadcaster. They are to appear in court to face charges of “supplying a foreign state with information prejudicial to national defense”, which carries a prison term of up to 15 years, police officials said.
The mood in Phnom Penh was tense in the days leading up to the decision, with the government mobilizing hundreds of police officers and army personnel and banning political protest. Barricades blocked major roads leading to the Supreme Court in the city centre.
On Wednesday night, armed government forces raided several offices of nongovernmental organisations, checking for hidden protesters.
In a speech delivered Thursday, Hun Sen announced that he planned to continue leading the country for at least another decade — despite the fact that elections are scheduled for July.