Approximately 100 monks gathered at Wat Ounalom Tuesday afternoon to publicize several petitions and papers bearing the thumbprints of 15,500 monks who have declared their opposition to monks’ voting rights, Mohanikaya Buddhist sect Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong said Tuesday.
Tep Vong repeated Tuesday his belief that Cambodian monks must remain politically neutral.
“We are not against any party or support any party, but we need to have solidarity between monks for developing our Buddhist religion,” Tep Vong said.
This latest push to keep monks politically neutral comes three weeks after hundreds of monks attempted to register for the July elections. Most were turned away Feb 17 by reason of improper voter identification. A decree issued by Tep Vong last year declared Cambodian Buddhism incompatible with voting, a move that could prevent monks from participating in the election.
The Constitution, however, gives monks the right to vote, and the National Election Committee has stated that monks will be able to vote. King Norodom Sihanouk wrote in a letter last month that he supports the right for monks to vote. Minister of Cults and Religion Chea Savoeun said in January that he will not ban monks from voting, but also said he would not issue a directive asking monks to cast ballots.
“If the monks who have registered to vote want to vote, we do not ban them. It is their right,” Tep Vong’s assistant Chhoeng Bunchhen said Tuesday. “But today we made this briefing to show that our Mohanikaya sect does not support monks voting in the next general election.”
Mohanikaya Deputy Supreme Patriarch Nun Nget said monks must not vote because they could would cause unrest in pagodas.
“In every pagoda there are a lot of monks. If they each vote for the party they love, they will have problems, dividing the monks into two or three [opposing factions],” Nun Nget said. He said monks must maintain political neutrality because they receive food from “every people and every party.”
