Former Cambodian army commander enters government along with 9 new members

Phnom Penh (Cambodia), 07/07/2007. Military officials having their picture taken on the occasion of the inauguration of the new National Assembly. On March 12th, MPs placed their trust in recently dismissed former Cambodian army commander Ke Kim Yan, now appointed deputy prime Minister
© John Vink / Magnum

Ka-set

By Duong Sokha
12-03-2009

Already disparaged and criticised because it hosts more than 360 Ministers, secretaries of state and under-secretaries of state altogether, the Cambodian government will soon welcome ten new members. On Thursday March 12th, during a brief extraordinary session held at the National Assembly in the presence of rime Minister Hun Sen, 86 out of 87 MPs (one abstention) placed their trust in the newcomers. Among them, Ke Kim Yan, who was removed as Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) commander in chief by a Royal Decree on January 22nd after Hun Sen suggested the proposition, is now appointed “deputy prime Minister in charge of combating drugs”. The high-ranking official is now back in favour and becomes, as announced a week before, the tenth prime Minister of this excessive government. The session was ignored by the two opposition political formations, the Human Rights Party and the one led by Sam Rainsy, who had his parliamentary immunity restored a few days before the vote.

Between rehabilitation and advancement
The March 12th extraordinary session, presided over by CPP hierarch Heng Samrin and held to approve the appointment of the ten new government members, was attended by the majority of MPs of the ruling Cambodian People’s party (CPP), as well as the four elected representatives of the so-called royalist formations, FUNCINPEC and the Norodom Ranariddh Part (NRP), i.e. 87 representatives of the Nation out of the 123 of the National Assembly.

General Ke Kim Yan, a permanent member of the CPP’s Central Committee, whose removal last January left one to wonder about disagreements between Hun Sen and other high-ranking officials within the ruling party, is now entering the circle of deputy-prime Ministers, which keeps expanding legislature after legislature. Ke Kim Yan will take a newly-created seat and will specifically be in charge of combating drugs.

Another “rehabilitated” official, Serei Kosal, a former member of the royalist formation FUNCINPEC who defected to the CPP late 2008, gets back to his seat of senior Minister “in charge of special envoys”, whereas eight other important persons have already been appointed to positions of secretary of state in five different Ministries.

Opposition denounce a superfluous increase in number of job positions
These appointments are deemed unnecessary by opposition elected representatives from the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Human Rights party (HRP) who boycotted the session on account of the fact that the current government is already composed of three times as many members (Ministers, secretaries of state and under-secretaries of state) as there are elected representatives in the National Assembly.

Yim Sovann, spokesman for the SRP, reckons this governmental inflation is necessarily synonymous with chaos. The opposition official pointed out that members of the equivalent of the Council of Ministers in the People’s Republic of China, a country which totals more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, are fewer in number than those in Cambodia, 100 times less populated than China. “This comes back to increasing the expenses of the state, bureaucracy and corruption. The government should think about solutions to solve the issues raised by the global economic crisis, the drop in the number of investors and foreign tourists, and the decline in garment exportations, rather than multiply job positions”, the SRP elected representative in Phnom Penh suggested.

For his part, HRP president Kem Sokha insisted on justifying the boycott of the session by the three MPs who bear the colours of his party (including himself). Extraordinary sessions are usually meant to allow elected representatives to examine questions that are important for the Nation, he explained. According to him, the appointment to the government of these new members was neither urgent nor useful. “The number of officials in the current government is already excessive compared with other countries, some of which total several hundred million inhabitants. So many under-secretaries of state walk around and have nothing to do!”, the HRP elected representative in Kampong Cham denounced.

Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity restored
The order of the day for this March 12th extraordinary session only mentioned the trust vote over the ten new government officials. It is nevertheless right at the end of the session that the news about the restoration of the parliamentary immunity of opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who is currently away in Europe, was discreetly revealed. Nguon Nhel, first CPP vice-president of the Lower Chamber, simply declared to journalists that, upon a proposition of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court and the Ministry of Justice, the Permanent Committee (PC) of the National Assembly restored on Tuesday March 10th the parliamentary immunity of the SRP president, which was suspended on February 26th. Sam Rainsy’s immunity was suspended following his refusal to pay a 10 million-riel fine (USD2,500) after the National Election Committee (NEC) reproached him for having disparaged CPP leaders during the campaign for the July 2008 legislative elections. Sam Rainsy eventually accepted to pay the fine, shortly after the suspension of his parliamentary immunity. The case is now closed.