Cambodian Mine Action Center Chairman Ieng Mouly said Sunday that he is going to resist the Sam Rainsy Party’s efforts to force his resignation as head of the troubled agency.
Sam Rainsy is expected today to request that Ieng Mouly be brought before the National Assembly to explain revelations of financial mismanagement that have plagued CMAC and led to allegations of corruption among its officials.
The opposition party leader said Sunday that Ieng Mouly has not been held accountable enough for CMAC’s problems and hoped he could be pressured to leave his post.
But Ieng Mouly defended his record with CMAC and vowed not to resign until being told to do so by Prime Minister Hun Sen or the donor nations that fund at least 90 percent of the agency’s operations.
“It’s not up to Sam Rainsy to set my destiny for me,” Ieng Mouly said by telephone Sunday.
Ieng Mouly has remained relatively untouched by the CMAC personnel shake-ups that followed a critical independent audit into the agency’s finances and demining operations, and the suspension of a large amount of donor nation money.
In early August the man chiefly responsible for CMAC’s day-to-day operations, Sam Sotha, was fired as director general and two other senior CMAC officials were transferred from their posts. Ieng Mouly and Sam Sotha both have said in the past that the UNDP and its top adviser to CMAC, Richard Warren, should shoulder some of the blame for management problems at the agency.
Another independent audit of CMAC is expected to be released in less than a month and follows CMAC’s acknowledgment last week that it will fail to make many of the end-of-August reform deadlines imposed by donor nations earlier this month.
Ieng Mouly will lead a meeting of CMAC’s governing council—the agency’s policy-making arm—today to discuss demands made by donor nations for reform within the agency.
