Dual citizens may be banned from Prime Minister Role

Emerging from a meeting on electoral reform Monday, senior ruling party lawmaker Cheam Yeap said that the government is considering modifying Cambodia’s nationality law to ban those with dual citizenship from running for the office of prime minister. Mr. Yeap, who represented the CPP at the second meeting of the new joint-party Electoral Reform Committee on Monday, explained that the change, which he said would help prevent treason, would not be introduced immediately but was one of the government’s long-term plans. “We want the prime minister to have only a single nationality, and not two nationalities,” Mr. Yeap told reporters after the meeting. … Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who lived in Paris until 1993 after his family was exiled under then-Prince Sihanouk in 1965, holds dual French and Cambodian citizenship. The CNRP president has twice fled to France to avoid criminal convictions—most recently between 2009 and 2013—in a case brought against him by the government. …

Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/dual-citizens-may-be-banned-from-prime-minister-role-53845/