Cambodia’s Ruling Party Sues Opposition Politician Over Election Criticism – The Diplomat

ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

As positive as night time follows day, Cambodia’s ruling Cambodian Individuals’s Social gathering (CPP) has sued a senior member of the opposition Candlelight Social gathering (CLP) for claiming that this month’s commune elections had been unfair.

In accordance with a grievance filed by a authorities lawyer on Tuesday, the CPP administration is suing Son Chhay, the get together’s vice chairman, for $1 million in compensation for feedback he made in an internet interview, the native media outlet Cambodianess reported Tuesday.

The June 5 commune and sangkat election, an necessary bellwether for subsequent 12 months’s nationwide election, noticed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s hegemonic get together win 9,338 out of the 11,622 commune council seats up for election, whereas the CLP, the most recent incarnation of the opposition get together based by the opposition chief Sam Rainsy in 1995, received 2,119 council seats.

Throughout his interview with The Cambodia Each day on June 7, two days after election day, Son Chhay pointed to the host of disadvantages going through the CLP and different opposition events, from the apparent pro-CPP bias of the nation’s Nationwide Election Committee to the widespread intimidatory vote-buying that foamed the runway for the CPP. As  a consequence, Son Chhay mentioned that the election couldn’t be thought of free, truthful, or democratic, and that it didn’t replicate the need of the Cambodian individuals.

Within the authorized grievance, authorities lawyer Ky Tech claimed that Son Chhay’s feedback “unfold false info with malicious intent and had been slanderous, which was significantly damaging to the fame of the Cambodian Individuals’s Social gathering, which received the election.” Thach Setha, the CLP’s president, mentioned that Son Chhay, who holds each Cambodian and Australian citizenship, left the nation for Australia earlier than the lawsuit was filed.

Having fun with this text? Click on right here to subscribe for full entry. Simply $5 a month.

Most instantly, the lawsuit displays the federal government’s abuse of the authorized system for political ends, a phenomenon that has elevated over the previous 20 years, a improvement that roughly tracks the decline in using violence as a device of Cambodian political life. It additionally means that whereas the participation of the CLP within the commune election would possibly counsel a loosening of the CPP’s grip on energy, the ruling get together will proceed to protect the political house towards the emergence of any significant democratic various.

Over the previous 5 years, the CPP has waged a fierce crackdown on the political opposition and the nation’s unbiased media and civil society. This concerned the court-ordered banning of the Cambodia Nationwide Rescue Social gathering (CNRP), then the nation’s largest and most succesful opposition get together, which scored important beneficial properties at nationwide elections in 2013. It additionally concerned the next arrest of the get together’s then president, Kem Sokha on expenses of treason and the scattering of most of its senior officers into exile.

That this crackdown stays operative, regardless of the federal government’s obvious tolerance for a extra open type of electoral democracy, was conclusively confirmed on Tuesday, when a Phnom Penh court docket sentenced 31 opposition activists to prolonged jail phrases for incitement and plotting towards the CPP authorities. All of them had been members or shut associates of the CNRP, together with Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer who has lengthy been a critic of the CPP.

With an opposition get together as soon as once more capable of function legally, it’s attainable that Cambodia will revert to a much less brazenly authoritarian state. However the lawsuit is an instance that the boundaries of the politically attainable stay constricted, and shall be vigilantly policed by the ruling get together.