PM ridicules SRP defections

Prime Minister Hun Sen cuts a ribbon during the opening of a new building for the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction yesterday in Phnom Penh.

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday mocked the recent defections and resignations of opposition Sam Rainsy Party members and called it proof it was impossible for the SRP to ever rule the Kingdom.

Speaking at the inauguration of the new Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning & Construction building in Phnom Penh yesterday, the premier warned that any change of government would necessarily entail loss of citizens’ lives.

“Now wait to see Egypt, [you] suppose it is finished, people die more than before. Libya, [you] suppose it is finished…[It has changed] but not according to the goal,” Hun Sen said.

Hun Sen also called the November resignation of three SRP parliamentarians – an apparent attempt to hamstring the constitutionality of National Assembly decisions – a “wrong strategy of the party”.

The premier also called out SRP deputy president Kong Korm, a former member of Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as forgetting all the favors the ruling regime once afforded him, including pulling him from rags in Kampong Cham province to riches as the ambassador in Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi. “Don’t say that you [Kong Korm] oppose this or oppose that.... If I had a tape recorder from that time…”, Hun Sen said. On Tuesday, 10 opposition 

Human Rights Party officials who had defected from the SRP five months earlier swore their allegiance to the CPP.

Former SRP senator Van Sivoeun, who led the defecting group from the SRP to the HRP and then the CPP, said that opposition parties were too embroiled in accusations to be of interest. “I go to the CPP to share in the development of the nation, correct bad to good, correct from poor to rich,” Van Sivoeun said.