PM attack on Rainsy
Fri,
13 November 2015
Prime Minister Hun Sen
yesterday launched a searing personal attack on Cambodia National Rescue Party
president Sam Rainsy, saying he was the “son of a traitor” and nothing like
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party this week trounced Myanmar’s military junta in
historic elections.
Responding
to recent comments by
Rainsy suggesting the success of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) foreshadowed
the premier’s own downfall in the 2018 national election, Hun Sen blasted the
CNRP leader in videos and text posted on his Facebook page, and warned of
possible legal action against the opposition’s leadership.
“I cannot keep calm because of
this insult by the son of a traitor,” Hun Sen wrote, noting the differences in
Myanmar and Cambodia’s political landscapes.
“[I] appreciate the success of
the opposition in Myanmar . . . but the opposition leader in Cambodia . . .
again took this opportunity to attack me and again destroyed the culture of
dialogue that, recently, was being fixed [thanks] to the meeting set up between
Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng and Sam Rainsy,” a reference to recent
high-level talks to defuse political tensions following an attack on two CNRP
lawmakers last month.
Hun Sen then turned his
attention to Rainsy’s father, Sam Sary, a former top government official and
ambassador to England in the 1950s who fell out of favour with then-head of
state Prince Norodom Sihanouk and fled Cambodia when his name was attached to
an alleged coup plot.
He said the opposition leader
could not compare himself to Suu Kyi because her father, Aung San, considered
the father of Myanmar’s independence from colonialism, was a “patriot”, whereas
his was a “traitor”.
“Your Excellency called me a
dictator, and today I called you son of a traitor, but it is not me who
insulted your family . . . I am following the word used by the former regime,”
he said.
“I know in our modern society
it is difficult to be accepted [as a traitor], but I cannot change the historic
traitor to [a nationalist],” he wrote, later adding: “The leaves do not fall
far from the base of the tree.”
In a video posted later in the
day, Hun Sen then warned Rainsy and his deputy Kem Sokha that they faced legal
action for “defamation” over recent comments by Rainsy in Japan calling for
international help to ensure free elections because the CPP wanted to avoid the
“democratic process”.
“This time, don’t expect to run
out of the country if you [Rainsy] still continue to abuse [the law],” he said,
after also raising the spectre of legal action over anti-government rallies
following the disputed 2013 election.
Further,
in a bid to seemingly embarrass the CNRP leader, Hun Sen released the alleged
text of a personal apology Rainsy
sent him on October 29, three days after CNRP lawmakers Nhay Chamroeun and Kong
Sakphea were brutally beaten outside parliament during the tail end of a
pro-Cambodian People’s Party rally against Kem Sokha.
The
message, which sits awkwardly next to Rainsy’s initial accusation that
Hun Sen had orchestrated the attack using “fascist methods”, reminds the
premier of the family dinner the
political rivals enjoyed in July, when relations between the parties were at a
high point under the so-called “culture of dialogue”.
“I strongly regret [my
commentary] whether or not it was caused by misinterpretation . . . I would
like to apologise to Samdech, if I made you disappointed [even] unintentionally,”
he wrote.
Rainsy, who is in Japan, did
not respond to requests for comment yesterday, but re-issued a statement
standing by the apology as “good manners”.
Political tensions remain high
after the lawmakers’ bashing and subsequent ousting of Kem Sokha as the
parliament’s first vice president.
The
prime minister has denied the CPP organised the
attacks, for which three soldiers have been charged.
He has, however, acknowledged
the initial 2,000-strong protest that preceded the violence was organised in
response to opposition protests that met him on recent state visits to New York
and France.
Only last week, both Hun Sen
and Rainsy pledged to continue the so-called culture of dialogue, an agreement
– stemming from last year’s deal to end the CNRP’s boycott of parliament – to
end the charged and combative rhetoric that has for so long characterised
Cambodian politics.
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