National Assembly lawmakers on May 16 met with the organizers of an anticorruption petition but declined to accept more than one million signatures and thumbprints they had collected since 2006.
The petition, endorsed by 1,098,163 people in 19 towns and provinces, calls for the government and legislature to enact an anticorruption law which has been in the drafting process for nearly 15 years.
Accompanied by a rally of more than 100 people, the reams of paper containing the more than one million signatures and thumbprints were stacked in 12 cyclos and brought to gates of the Assembly.
Though 10 petition organizers entered the Assembly to meet with members of the Assembly’s commission on human rights and complaints reception, the petition documents were kept outside the gates.
Yong Kim Eng, president of the People Center for Development and Peace, said May 16 that the commission’s chairwoman, CPP lawmaker Khuon Sudary, agreed to accept only the petition’s that had accompanying statements and a poster bearing photographic images of all the signatures and thumbprints.
Khuon Sudary had refused requests to come to the Assembly’s gates to be presented with the petition, Yong Kim Eng said.
“We’re disappointed. At least, she could have come out and accepted them as a symbol,” he said, adding that Khuon Sudary had told the rally to take the petition back to the their own offices for storage.
Khuon Sudary could not be reached for comment Friday however commission member and CPP lawmaker Van Sengly said the commission’s job is to do no more than forward complaints to relevant ministries.
“The role of the commission is to accept the statement. That is all,” he said.
“The National Assembly will wait for responses from other ministries,” he added.
SRP lawmaker Son Chhay, who attended Friday’s meeting, said the Assembly’s leadership had shown bias by not appointing the SRP-led commission on corruption to accept the petition.
“The commission chairwoman said take [the petition] back to keep at your own offices,” Son Chhay said.
