Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Elections: Prince Ranariddh backtracks

Cambodge Soir
12-08-2008

This is probably a political manoeuvre in order to end his forced exile. Anyhow, the president of the NRP is accepting the preliminary election results which were made public on Saturday 9th of August.

A letter, personally signed by him, was aired a few hours ago on the Cambodian television channel CTN. In this document the prince stipulates that the NRP “doesn’t create any alliance with any other political party.” However, the day following the elections of the 27th of July his party had set up a coalition with the SRP, the NRP and Funcinpec in order to challenge the validity of the election process.

These statements happen at a time when Norodom Ranariddh, still in exile in Malaysia, has used all his legal appeals aiming to cancel the legal verdict against him. He has indeed been sentenced to 18 months in prison and a fine of 150,000 dollars for misuse of public property. His last alternative is to obtain a royal pardon approved by the Prime Minister Hun Sen. However, for the time being the latter refuses to grant clemency.

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