Embattled Funcinpec President Prince Norodom Ranariddh made an impassioned plea on Thursday for an end to rifts tearing at the heart of his royalist party and warned that only solidarity could avert “tremendous disaster” at next year’s national elections.
Prince Ranariddh lamented his party’s disunity at the largest-ever commemoration ceremony for royalists killed during the July 1997 factional fighting and during the 1980s resistance movement against the Vietnamese-backed Phnom Penh government.
Funcinpec members must put personal arguments aside and recommit to working for the party, the prince said.
“I would like to implore all Funcinpec members to forget what has caused disunity and division and made the party weak,” Prince Ranariddh said in a strained voice through what appeared to be tears.
“If we continue, the split will make our party weak. So from July 12, 2002, start to be unified,” Prince Ranariddh said.
The emergence of self-interest in the party was also a betrayal of the Funcinpec members who died, he said, adding that officials should refrain from talking to journalists.
“I see that when [we are] rich we start to split, but when poor [we] loved each other,” he said.
Funcinpec’s disastrous showing in the February local elections has prompted strong internal criticism of Prince Ranariddh’s leadership and claims his coalition with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s CPP has enfeebled the party.
A statement from the office of Funcinpec Secretary-General Prince Norodom Sirivudh on Wednesday criticized the contents of a July 10 article that appeared in The Cambodia Daily, in which Prince Ranariddh was criticized by high-ranking party officials for leaving off the names of some prominent party members from a list of potential candidates for the 2003 national elections.
The list was drawn up by a committee consisting of five high-ranking members of the party’s leadership, the statement said. Prince Ranariddh said Wednesday he signed off on the list.
“Candidates who have been appointed are all of high quality of character, and their sense of responsibility to serve the supreme interests of the party is very high as well,” the statement said.
More than 2,000 Buddhist monks, school children, relatives of the dead and party officials packed the grounds of Wat Chambok Meas Thursday for the ceremony in Muk Kampul district, Kandal province.
A specially built commemorative hall was unveiled at the pagoda dedicated to some 4,000 royalist and resistance members who died in fighting in the 1980s and during the 1997 ousting of then-first prime minister Prince Ranariddh.
Nhiek Bun Chhay, deputy Senate president and former leader of the royalist armed forces, said those who were being commemorated died trying to liberate Cambodia from foreign invaders.
Some 50 people died during the three days of street fighting five years ago, and dozens more —including several senior Funcinpec generals—were killed in the fighting’s aftermath.
Prince Ranariddh said some had criticized the erection of the “memorial monument for democrats” dedicated to dead and the holding of ceremonies on July 5 and July 6, the anniversary of the fighting.
However, the party would not hide from remembering those who died, he said.
“I think it was King Norodom Sihanouk’s idea to create the resistance [during the 1980s]. And more than 4,000 people died.”
The commemoration was neither a provocation nor intended to unravel the process of reconciliation in Cambodia, Prince Ranariddh added.
“We must not be shy. We have no ideas to split the nation or national reconciliation,” he said.
Dozen of large wreaths and garlands of jasmine flowers were laid in the commemorative hall to honor the slain royalist and resistance troops.
Prince Ranariddh and his wife, Princess Marie, lighted incense and candles in front of a large altar in the hall bedecked with three busts of senior resistance fighters from the 1980s and 10 photographs of well-known royalists.
One woman cried as she laid a wreath with a red ribbon printed with the words: “In remembrance and gratitude to a hero for sacrifice for the nation, religion, King.”
Relatives representing 530 families of the deceased Funcinpec party members and officials lined up in the morning sun to collect donations of rice, sarongs and money from the party leadership.
“This is a good ceremony to remember the dead and to encourage the victim’s families,” said Chao Sokha, 48.
“It is small, but it reminds us of the dead,” he said.
