Prime Minister Hun Sen failed to uphold a promise made last week to reinstate some 17 Funcinpec government officials who he removed from office in September, Funcinpec officials said Wednesday.
Funcinpec’s Co-Minister of Interior You Hockry sent a letter to Hun Sen this week demanding that the prime minister keep his promise, said Funcinpec spokesman Kassie Neou.
But in a reply sent to Funcinpec, Hun Sen said the royalists must “wait for the new government,” Kassie Neou said.
Hun Sen dismissed the 17 civil servants, including four undersecretaries of state, claiming they were not fulfilling their duties. The order outraged Funcinpec officials, who called it an act of intimidation aimed at weakening their party.
Though the premier announced last week that he had reversed his decision, no official paperwork has yet been submitted to the Council of Ministers to allow the fired officials to return, Kassie Neou said.
CPP spokesman Khieu Kanharith said Wednesday that he did not know why the dismissed Funcinpec officials had not been given permission to return to work.
Prak Sokhon, the government’s deputy secretary-general, declined to comment.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, CPP and Funcinpec officials said they agreed to establish a new government office to oversee human rights investigations, apparently replacing the current government-run human rights committee headed by Om Yentieng, Hun Sen’s advisor.
The agreement, which allows the two sides to inch further in their talks to establish a 73-point policy platform for a new coalition government, resulted from a significant compromise of Funcinpec’s earlier demands. The royalists had lobbied for a national human rights committee, independent from the government and charged with a broad mandate.
The CPP, however, pressed to keep the government-run committee.
The new office will have less power than the current human rights committee and will still be run by the government, Kassie Neou and Prak Sokhon said.
Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said Wednesday that given the scant details of the parties’ agreement, it is difficult to tell how the new human rights office would work.
“It does not matter about the name, but a human rights body should be independent from the government, have more power and should be neutral and not partisan,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Wency Leung)
