UPI Asia Online
By Sourn Serey Ratha
Guest Commentary
Published: August 27, 2008
Cranston City, RI, United States, — The full implementation of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement is the only alternative to lead Cambodia toward freedom and democracy.
Presently, Cambodia is a police state just as were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria during their occupation by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. The elections in Central Europe during the Red Army occupation were merely a masquerade for the communist control of these countries by the Soviet Union.
It was the same in the Cambodian parliamentary elections held last month. The European Union said the elections failed to meet international standards because they were biased in favor of the ruling party. Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party claimed a landslide victory, ensuring that he will keep the seat he has held for 23 years.
In the same way as the police states of Central Europe, the Cambodian People’s Party has absolute control of all aspects of Cambodian life: the police, the army, the administration, education, healthcare, the economy, land, real estate, natural resources and the National Election Committee, without transparency and true representative oversight.
As in Central Europe then, elections in Cambodia are a sham.
Although less apparent, the People's Army of Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was comparable to the Soviet Union's Red Army's occupation of the Eastern European countries. Prime Minister Hun Sen once publicly admitted in a speech broadcast on national radio, "Yes, I am a Vietnamese puppet. More than 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers still occupy Cambodia."
Hence, Vietnam had Cambodia under its thumb.
While under Vietnam's control, CPP leaders signed the 1979, 1982, 1983, 1985 and 2005 treaties with Vietnam in violation of Cambodia's territorial integrity and sovereignty, and ceded lands and territorial seas to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
Through these treaties, millions of Vietnamese flooded into Cambodia, and the majority of them have been authorized by the NEC to vote for the CPP, out a total of 8 million voters.
Simultaneously, several hundred thousand legitimate Cambodians had their voting rights "ripped off," according to Puthea Hang, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia. Without a doubt, these millions of immigrant Vietnamese voters have artificially increased the number of CPP-elected members.
How can we rectify the wrongs committed by the CPP and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Kingdom of Thailand and the Lao People's Democratic Republic toward Cambodia?
The solution is the integral implementation of the Paris Peace Agreement of Oct. 23, 1991.
Under the CPP's watch, the elections have always been manipulated, rigged, unfair, and undemocratic.
To reach the full implementation of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, we urge the opposition parties to stick to the following strategy in two stages:
The two main opposition parties, the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party must, as they have already done, reject the results of the July 27 election and continue to do so.
What exactly does it mean? This means that SRP and HRP must agree that they were awarded respectively 26 and three "elected members,” but they must claim that they should have obtained more than 29 seats. Therefore, they are contesting the validity of the mandate of the 90 CPP-elected members to the Parliament.
Simply put, the three opponent parties are not rejecting their own 29 "elected members" to Parliament.
Hence, Article 118 E. of the Electoral Laws did not apply to these 29 "elected members.”
Therefore, the NEC cannot rip off the mandate of these 29 "elected members" of SRP and HRP to distribute these 29 seats to other parties, as Hun Sen declares.
The first line of Article 76 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia stipulates that the National Assembly consists of at least 120 members. This article will block the Fourth National Assembly from being fully constituted if any four of the "elected members" refuse to participate in the first session of the Fourth National Assembly.
So, it needs only the non-participation in the first session of the Fourth National Assembly of any four "elected members" of SRP and HRP to block the Fourth National Assembly from being fully constituted.
Conversely, if 120 "elected members" participate in the first session of the Fourth National Assembly – which will be convened by the king or, in his absence, Senate President Chea Sim – on Sept. 24, then the Fourth National Assembly will be de facto officially constituted because the CPP has at its disposal 90 "elected members.”
"With a super majority of two-thirds, you can appoint a horse as president," a U.S. congressman once said.
Hence, a fortiori, the CPP with its 90 elected members – more than the two-thirds majority, and more than the number required for a quorum of 87 – can appoint anyone as president and the next day can strip that person of all parliamentary immunity rights, then put him on trial by a kangaroo court and execute him as a traitor to the nation. Such a kangaroo court already condemned Norodom Rannaridh in absentia as a traitor.
Hence, the 90 seats for the CPP are not acceptable because they indicate that the elections were not really free and fair. In a true democracy, no political party would get more than a two-thirds majority. Only when the elections are not free and fair, such as under communism or fascism, can one party get more than a two-thirds majority of seats.
With 90 CPP "elected members,” Cambodia will be forever under the dictatorship of the CPP.
According to NEC rules, the first session of the Fourth Assembly is to be held on Sept. 24.
Therefore, according to article 78, the mandate of the Third National Assembly will terminate on Sept. 24. From that day on the Hun Sen regime will become the caretaker government, legally empowered only to conduct routine business, and will have no political and economic mandate to act on behalf of Cambodia. This already happened during 11 months of 2003-2004 until the unconstitutional package vote put an end to the stalemate.
If four "elected members" refuse to participate in the first session of the Fourth National Assembly, then Cambodia will have neither a National Assembly nor a government.
Therefore, by blocking the Fourth Assembly from being fully constituted, the king, if he has the courage to do so, can ask for new elections to be organized and supervised by the United Nations, which is the only way to bring about the full implementation of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement.
This is the only way to cut the Gordian knot and dismantle the police state that has ruled Cambodia since the signature of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement.
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(Sourn Serey Ratha is chief of mission of the Action Committee for Justice and Equity for Cambodians Overseas, based in Rhode Island, United States. He was born to a farmer's family in Cambodia, earned B.A. degrees in law and sociology in Phnom Penh and an M.A. in international policy from Mara University of Technology in Malaysia. He has been a social activist for his country on the national and international levels since 1997. ©Copyright Sourn Serey Ratha.)
