The National Assembly will vote this month to decide whether the ruling CPP’s recently removed Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy, Suy Sem, will be appointed as the new Minister of Mines and Energy, CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun said Friday.
Mr. Sem’s return to his old, but newly-renamed, ministry would mean that former Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh is now the new Minister of Industry and Handicrafts.
Last month, the National Assembly said it would split the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy into two new ministries, and add the “handicraft” portfolio to the new ministerial iteration.
“The government has renominated Suy Sem for the Ministry of Mines and Energy and nominated Cham Prasidh for the minister of Handicrafts and Industry,” Mr. Vun said Friday.
The Assembly’s Permanent Committee approved the agenda for a meeting to be held on December 20, when the fate of the two proposed ministers will be voted on.
“A number of other secretaries of state were moved and appointed for some ministries such as tourism, and we will also vote on December 20 for His Excellency Uch Kim An, the Cambodian ambassador to France, to [move to] a new position as a minister to the delegation of the prime minister,” Mr. Vun said.
Cambodia’s current representative to Unesco in Paris, Nouth Narang, will become the new ambassador to France.
Mr. Vun also said that a letter has been sent to the Ministry of Interior to complain about members of parliament whose vehicles still bear licence plates from the 2008-2013 government mandate.
“We have already made the new, fifth mandate [licence plates]. There are number plates for all 123 elected parliamentarians, including the 55 new number plates for the 55 parliamentarians of the CNRP,” he said.
“So use the valid one.”
The CNRP is boycotting the CPP-led National Assembly to demand an investigation of July’s national election, which it claims Prime Minister Hun Sen’s CPP stole through vote fraud.
