The newly formed and controversially named Human Rights Party will have to postpone its first party congress because it has not yet been registered with the Interior Ministry, party leader Kem Sokha said Thursday.
Kem Sokha, who recently left his position as president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights to found his own political party, said that he intended to hold the congress on July 7 at Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh.
His request to rent out the facility was denied, he said, because the party was not yet fully registered with the Interior Ministry.
For a party to register with the ministry they must submit the thumbprints of at least 4,000 supporters with their paperwork. Kem Sokha said that the ministry has rejected around 2,000 of the thumbprints his party handed in.
“We are sad to see the congress is delayed,” he said, adding that another two thousand thumbprints have been sent to the ministry to correct the problem.
Lay Voharith, director of the Interior Ministry’s Political Affairs Department, confirmed that the ministry had rejected around 2,000 of the Human Rights party’s thumbprints because there was no mention of the location where the prints were collected.
His department is currently reviewing the new thumbprints sent in by the party, Lay Voharith said.
“We are checking the thumbprints, everything is good so far,” he said, adding that the review would be completed soon.
Lay Voharith said that the issue was strictly a technical one, adding that the ministry has no desire to keep Kem Sokha’s party from forming. “It is against the law to prevent a party,” he said. “If we have 4,000 thumbprints, we will allow the party to work.”
Mar Sophal, monitoring coordinator for the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said that it was unlikely that the ruling CPP would try to block the formation of the Human Rights Party because the fledgling party will only help split the opposition vote.