Citizenship rule for bigwigs
PHNOM PENH: Cambodian leader Hun Sen yesterday ordered the justice ministry to amend the constitution to bar holders of the country’s top posts, including the prime minister, from being citizens of other nations.
On his Facebook page,
Hun Sen said the prime minister, upper and lower houses speakers and head of the constitutional council must only hold Cambodian citizenship “to show loyalty to the nation and avoid foreign interference”.
The remarks by Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders after more than three decades in power, come days after a report in the Guardian
newspaper named him as one of thousands of non-Europeans given Cypriot passports, citing information in a data dump known collectively as the “Pandora Papers”.
But lawyers for the Cambodian government yesterday said the Guardian report was false and Hun Sen has only Cambodian citizenship.
“Government lawyers deny and dismiss the Guardian story completely as untruthful, baseless, and in contrast of truth,” they said in a statement.
The statement did not specify whether or not Hun Sen had held more than one nationality in the past.
Hun Sen’s longtime rival Sam Rainsy is a French citizen living in Paris to avoid a series of convictions.