Kem Sokha vs Hun Sen

Details are Sketchy

February 16, 2008

Boss of the Human Rights Party Kem Sokha has declared victory over Hun Sen and the law to allow non-Cambodians to own Cambodian land.

Kem Sokha, HRP president who used to criticize the government on this issue, said that he learned about this issue through the news media. He said that Hun Sen rejection of this rumor is a victory.

Kem Sokha said: “Now we see that he (Hun Sen) is pulling out, we heard it coming, we didn’t see this law being adopted yet, but we prevented it from happening. If we were to allow it to be adopted, it would be very difficult and it would be too late.”

Prevented it from happening? Please. No such law was ever even thought about, much less drafted. Of course, politicians spin, and nobody should be too surprised when people running for office start painting reality with only beautiful colors. But that’s not what Kem Sokha is doing. In this case Kem Sokha is inventing reality, which implies that he thinks voters are too stupid to notice such unvarnished mendacity.

Or that’s the best case scenario. The other option is that Kem Sokha really is frighteningly clueless.

Of course, all that presumes that Kem Sokha really is a genuine electoral candidate, and not some CPP stooge created to protect the illusion of multi-party democracy. Considering the awesome stooge-like brilliance of Kem Sokha’s campaign so far, that’s not a difficult case to make.