The National Assembly failed to reach a quorum again Thursday, although members of Funcinpec made time to celebrate the 60th birthday of the party’s leader, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
With legislation to regulate civil servants waiting on the agenda, the prince used his small celebration to encourage party members to reach out to grassroots activists for July’s national elections.
“We, all Funcinpec members, must go to register and go to vote. Tell people to do so,” the prince told a gathering of Funcinpec members at party headquarters.
Prince Ranariddh is concerned, he said, because recently he spoke to a Funcinpec supporter who told him she has grown tired of voting for the party because “her votes two times so far did not make the prince the sole winner.”
Funcinpec lost in the 1998 elections in a vote largely criticized as full of intimidation and violence. The defeat came one year after the CPP wrested power from the prince by battling in the streets of Phnom Penh.
Until recently, the prince and Funcinpec had been seen as cowed by the CPP. But the prince has begun stepping away from Prime Minister Hun Sen’s policies, including statements made earlier this week by Hun Sen that the government should replace forest monitor Global Witness.
Now, with voter registration two weeks away, the prince is pushing hard to bring his supporters back to the polls. “Please keep voting for Funcinpec. Don’t get tired of [us],” Prince Ranariddh said Thursday, as he prepared to inaugurate a fountain and building at party headquarters. He also distributed food to several hundred poor people.
“All [of the country’s] major achievements, as we can see today, were born from my efforts in the first term of the government, but the people have forgotten and my efforts were ignored,” Ranariddh said.
Minister of Public Works and Transport Khy Taing Lim, who is the head of the party’s steering committee, gave the prince some praise as a birthday gift, calling him the “Vishnu of Democracy.”
