Despite Popularity, Rainsy’s Role Remains Uncertain

When opposition leader Sam Rainsy last touched down at Phnom Penh International Airport, he was greeted by some 100,000 supporters in what was the largest opposition rally in Cambodia’s 20 years of democracy. When he returns on Friday from the U.S., where he has been at­tending his daughter’s wedding, he will find himself at the center of a political standoff between the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP, the result of which will determine his party’s role inside the National Assembly over the next five years. It is also likely to determine the next step in the career of Mr. Rainsy, whose hopes of becoming a lawmaker have been dashed due to previous criminal convictions leveled against him that made his candidacy in the July 28 election impossible. At 64, Mr. Rainsy, as the president of the CNRP, has more support than at any point in his more than 18 years as an opposition politician. Yet for the first time since 1998, he is not an elected member of Parliament. Despite eleventh-hour efforts to be listed as a National Assembly candidate after his return to the country on July 19, just nine days before the election, the National Election Committee (NEC) decided that it was too late for Mr. Rainsy to run. … “There is a possible technical and legal arrangement for me to become a National Assembly member in the next few months,” Mr. Rainsy said in an email Wednesday, adding that it would take extensive reform measures on the part of the CPP for the CNRP to even consider validating a CPP-led government. “The CNRP would participate in the formation of a new National Assembly allowing the formation of another CPP-led government only if there were serious and credible guarantees that crucial reforms would be immediately implemented concerning the NEC, the election system, the Judiciary, the Parlia­ment, the Civil Administration, the Armed Forces, the broadcast media, the Human Rights Committee, the Anti-Corruption Unit, etc.,” Mr. Rainsy said. …

http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/despite-popularity-rainsys-role-remains-uncertain-39565/