Cambodia`s Hun Sen Urged to Allow Opposition Party Join Election

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Linna Chheng, a Cambodian young diplomat, was aware that the election to be held on July 29, in the country, gained the public limelight. Linna, when Tempo met on Friday, July 20, persuaded opposition parties to participate in the election.

According to Linna, the democracy in Cambodia was currently growing and that a total of 20 parties would join in the 2018 election. Five of the parties were the oppositions.

“The Cambodian government, in fact, expect more parties to participate in the election. We are a democratic country which is even better from Thailand,” said Linna during Friends of Indonesia program organized by the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry, on Friday, July 20.

The young diplomat said the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was banned by the government to do any political activities due to law violations. CNRP, she claimed, was the biggest opposition party among the other five.

Read: Sam Rainsy: Cambodia in Uncertainty State Without Opposition

She further mentioned Cambodian people still admired Hun Sen because they deemed the prime minister had created many developments in the rural regions and he committed to protect the people.

Earlier in April 2018, CNRP chairman Sam Rainsy demanded Cambodia government allow the opposition parties to participate in the election.

The Cambodia election became the spotlight of the international world. Prime Minister Hun Sen gained harsh critics for dissolving CNRP by force in November 2017. The party’s founder Sam Rainsy, who was also Hun Sen’s biggest rival, was criminalized thus he could not run as a candidate of Cambodia Prime Minister.

After gaining the majority of parliament seats in the legislative election on February 25, 2018, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) convinced the public of the benefit of having one ruling party. Prime Minister Hun Sen also compared the country to China that was successfully governed by one major party. 

Suci Sekarwati