As Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party negotiate over the leadership of their newly formed alliance, the parties’ presidents are putting aside years of bitter dispute in their quest to challenge the results of the July 27 election.
Funcinpec President Prince Norodom Ranariddh and opposition leader Sam Rainsy met Tuesday for a second time since the election, hastening their transformation from enemies to allies.
Addressing reporters after the meeting, Sam Rainsy said he was optimistic he and Prince Ranariddh could work together in their two-party Alliance of Democrats and even praised the prince, in sharp contrast to the cutting remarks he has made about the Funcinpec president in the past.
“I would like to appreciate the prince at this time…. People said Sam Rainsy is strong but the prince is stronger than me at this moment,” Sam Rainsy said.
Only weeks before, however, the rival parties were jostling in a bid to win the most seats in the election.
“Normally, there is a saying in politics: Friends are not always friends and enemies are not always enemies,” Funcinpec Deputy Secretary-General Ok Socheat said Tuesday, admitting he himself had been an outspoken critic of Sam Rainsy.
But, he added: “The situation pushed them together. Even the prince and Sam Rainsy do not want to join together, but the [party members] want them to join together.”
Strains in the relationship between the two leaders reached a breaking point in 1994, when Sam Rainsy, then a Funcinpec minister, was stripped of his title as Minister of Finance after criticizing the government of being involved in shady contract deals and illegal logging. The government at the time was led by co-prime ministers Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen.
Sam Rainsy was subsequently booted out of Funcinpec and was then expelled from the National Assembly in May of 1995. He later started his own party, the Khmer National Party, which was renamed the Sam Rainsy Party in 1998.
But hostilities between the prince and Sam Rainsy were present even before the latter was ousted.
In January 1995, the Voice of Khmer Youth reported that the prince had joked about killing Sam Rainsy at a birthday party for his wife, Princess Marie Ranariddh. The prince later told reporters he was only joking when he said that: “Soon there will be another widow in Phnom Penh—Saumura,” referring to Sam Rainsy’s wife, parliamentarian Tioulong Saumura.
In March of the same year, Sam Rainsy held a news conference ahead of an International Conference on the Reconstruction of Cambodia meeting, charging that corruption had contaminated the highest levels of government.
Answering reporters’ questions over whether Prince Ranariddh had been involved in extortion at the Council for the Development of Cambodia, Sam Rainsy said: “Yes, when you are responsible for the country, you are responsible for what the CDC is doing… So I think the prime ministers are responsible for the dubious deals made by the CDC. You cannot escape that.”
His charges were met with Prince Ranariddh’s statement days later, saying: “I am sorry that [Sam Rainsy] is Khmer, I am sorry he is a member of parliament, I am sorry he is a member of Funcinpec…I don’t praise him anymore.”
The prince added: “Before I thought he was a great patriot, but I don’t think that anymore. I don’t want to talk about that man. I don’t admire him very much. He talks badly about his country and about his people.”
While the feud between the two leaders was put on hold after the 1998 general election as their parties banded together during a political deadlock, it soon resumed after Funcinpec rejoined a coalition government with the CPP.
As recently as February this year, Sam Rainsy had launched a lawsuit against the prince over falsely claiming the opposition leader had been involved in the Jan 29 anti-Thai riots. The lawsuit was dropped “to defuse tension,” Sam Rainsy said, after the prince denied having accused him of joining the rioters.
Still, in spite of their rocky history, officials from both parties said they’re confident the new Alliance of Democrats, created to avoid forming a Hun Sen-led coalition government, will last.
“It’s not important about the personal problems [between Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy] because both of them have the same national conscience. They may have different rhetoric but they have the same goal,” said Sam Rainsy Party Secretary-General Eng Chhay Eang.
Ou Bunlong, a Sam Rainsy Party senator and steering committee member, agreed, saying Funcinpec had learned its lesson by breaking its alliance with the Sam Rainsy Party in favor of joining the CPP-led government in 1998.
“If right now, they join with CPP, they will destroy themselves in their political future. So I think the current Alliance of Democrats is stable,” Ou Bunlong said.
Even defectors from Funcinpec, such as parliamentarian Keo Remy, who joined the Sam Rainsy Party earlier this year, said they are happy the two parties are working together.
“I left Funcinpec not because he is bad. He’s a good leader but the people surrounding him are very bad,” Keo Remy said. But, he added: “Even though we have a different culture of working, we do have the same culture of democratic thinking among the membership.”
Party officials admit, however, there is some skepticism over the new alliance.
“Of course there are always some members displaying distrust with Prince Ranariddh,” said Sam Rainsy parliamentarian Son Chhay. Still, he said: “We only hope the two leaders can put aside their differences. In politics, you are always looking at what you can benefit from each other.”
