Fired Funcinpec officials argue with leadership

Khmer Circle: 

This culture of excusing the leadership and shielding it from all blame or personal accountability needs to be questioned by thinking people. One can be lied to and deceived from time to time, and perhaps, for most of us, to no grave expense to others except ourselves. But, personalities and politicians aspiring to be national leaders cannot allow themselves to be lied to again and again and still claim to be victims of lies and misinformation from subordinates. 

This Prince, in particular, had had a rare and golden opportunity in the early 1990s as leader of the victorious parliamentary opposition to place his nation among progressive, democratic and civilised countries but had ignored all sensible warnings as well as lessons in ill leadership set by his predecessors [including those of his own royal Father] to steer his country along the right course, not so much because of scheming or self-seeking subordinates around him, but rather because the scoundrel and self-seeking impulse in him opened the doors for them to indulge and carry on in this ship of fools!

This very same and familiar culture equally applies to Pol Pot's "social engineering" that led to one of the worst national and human disasters in history; it applies to Sihanouk over his reckless flirting with the Communist camp and his gambling with the lives of his compatriots who followed him [he had always cited Lon Nol and Sirikmatak for blame, of course]; and indeed to the present CPP leadership or more precisely, the man who protests his innocence over just about every calamity and failure taking place in his watch, including feigning ignorance over land eviction victims' protests and pleas for his intervention right outside his gates by the Independence Monument! Note that it is none other than his officials and cronies who have been and are behind all these plunders and rights violations.

At least, one brave soul had been sentenced to a lengthy prison term for pointing out this ludicrous claim of his...

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Ben Sokhean | Publication date 16 February 2018 | 12:20 ICT

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Funcinpec leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh speaks at a party congress in September. Heng Chivoan

“The rottenness already affects [the party] at a local level, [officials] try to lie to the Prince and cheat him,”

A group of dismissed Funcinpec officials has exchanged barbs with party leadership after filing a lawsuit for their reinstatement earlier this month, stating yesterday that if party leader Prince Norodom Ranarridh does not change tack the party would slide into irrelevance once more.

Meach Samroul, Kan Vudthy, Soung Phally, Kim Ravy, Nop Phorn and Seng Haksrun – along with Pheap Pheach, who did not sign the legal complaint – were dismissed after Haksrun requested that two other senior officials be booted from the party for nepotism. In response, Ranariddh dismissed Haksrun and the six others.

Samroul, a former personal assistant of the Prince, bemoaned the “financial and emotional sacrifice” for the party of the dismissed officials and said he feared that Funcinpec would fragment if the Prince continued “believing those bad officials who incited and flattered him”.

Kim Ravy warned the party would “win zero seats” in the upcoming election if it did not reform.

“The rottenness already affects [the party] at a local level, [officials] try to lie to the Prince and cheat him,” he said, adding that Funcinpec should learn from the Cambodian People’s Party’s organisational structure.

“They know how many members they have but we have not even thought about our local structure,” he said.

Funcinpec had already virtually lapsed into irrelevance until it was given a second life through the dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party. After the CNRP was dissolved, 41 of its National Assembly seats were handed over to the party.

On Wednesday Ranarridh said the complaint should be resolved internally and not in court, insisting “there is no disunity.”

Political analyst Lao Mong Hay suggested the rift exposed deeper problems within the party. “There cannot peace and order in any organization whenever its leadership has no strong moral authority,” he said.