CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha on Sunday warned that the opposition party’s 55 lawmakers could relaunch their boycott of the National Assembly if the CPP continues to balk in electoral reform negotiations.
Speaking at a public forum in Pursat City, Mr. Sokha said that if the ruling party does not honor its pledge to reform the National Election Committee (NEC), as it agreed to on July 22, the CNRP would consider its options.
“If we’ve entered the National Assembly and they manipulate us and the NEC isn’t changed, we will hold a convention in Phnom Penh again and ask all the representatives of our national council…to make a decision: Should the CNRP’s lawmakers continue to sit in the assembly or leave and do something else?”Mr. Sokha said.
The CNRP ended its 10-month assembly boycott in August after the CPP promised to create a new NEC composed of four members from each party and a ninth neutral member.
In further talks that followed their entry into parliament, however, the CPP has imposed a number of conditions on the deal that the opposition says undermines its premise.
