Opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned to Cambodia Monday afternoon after having his travels diverted to Paris last Thursday night by Thai immigration officials who denied him entry at the airport in Bangkok.
Speaking to reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport, Sam Rainsy speculated on foreign bias toward Prime Minister Hun Sen, advertised his party’s renewed partnership with Funcinpec as the nation’s sole hope and insulted the CPP.
“They say their country is neutral and do not want any Khmer faction to use their territory as a battlefield,” Sam Rainsy said of his barred entry into Thailand. “But I have a different opinion, because I think there are certain Thai leaders who have relations with the Hun Sen government in business, logging and various investments that they have to protect.”
Om Yentieng, an adviser to Hun Sen, disagreed. “I think this is a pretext he invented to cover his failure, to cover his shame,” he said Monday. “I do not know why Thailand did not let him into their country. Thailand is an independent country and it will not let Sam Rainsy do whatever he wants.”
Asked about Japan’s reported endorsement of another Hun Sen-led government, Sam Rainsy said, “Some countries want Cambodia not to have any change…. They want Cambodia to have stability, but stability is not always good. Look at the stability in North Korea. North Korea has 50 years of stability, but through the stability, the people remain slaves.”
Japanese Ambassador Gotaro Ogawa said Sunday that Japan had only urged Cambodia’s three major parties to cooperate on forming a new government as quickly as possible.
Having been ushered off to Paris last week, the opposition leader said he used his time there to lay groundwork for a September lobbying trip he and Funcinpec President Prince Norodom Ranariddh are planning.
Dismissing talk that the Funcinpec-Sam Rainsy Party alliance will splinter soon, Sam Rainsy said, “This alliance is very strong because it is the last chance to salvage our nation. If we are nationalists and we are democrats, and if we do not unite, our country will be ruined and Khmer people will grow poorer.” Sam Rainsy also said that despite the ruling party’s intimidation, harassment and vote-buying, 53 percent of the electorate had cast its votes elsewhere.
“Why is it that the CPP is so poor that it cannot find anyone to replace Mr Hun Sen? The Khmer people know that Hun Sen could not even finish primary school. Hun Sen is this dumb. So that means that the leadership of the CPP is even less intelligent than Mr Hun Sen,” Sam Rainsy said.
Asked to respond, Om Yentieng said, “I believe that his words are not the words of educated people. Humans must not look down on other humans. His words reflect that he is even less educated than the person” who did not finish primary school.
According to the biography “Hun Sen: Strongman of Cambodia” by Harish and Julie Mehta, Hun Sen attended six years of primary school and studied at Phnom Penh’s Lycee Indra Devi from 1965 to 1969, but did not graduate.
(Additional reporting by Pin Sisovann)
