VZCZCXRO2320
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHNH
DE RUEHPF #0543/01 1020840
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 120840Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8315
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PHNOM PENH 000543 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/FO, EAP/MLS, EAP/RSP, AND DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM EFIN EPET CB
SUBJECT: DAS JOHN MEETS OPPOSITION POLITICAL FIGURES, IFI 
REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU)  Summary.  Human rights leader Kem Sokha told 
visiting DAS Eric John that his move into politics was in 
response to lowered USAID funding to his Cambodian Center for 
Human Rights (CCHR) NGO as well as continued calls from the 
Cambodian people that he return to political life.  Kem Sokha 
said his new party would be more democratic and espouse a 
strong anti-corruption platform as well as term limits for 
the Prime Minister.  Opposition leader Sam Rainsy told John 
that Cambodia was effectively a two-party state in the 
aftermath of the April 1 commune elections.  Rainsy asked for 
USG support in convincing the government to resolve problems 
with voter registration, which Rainsy claimed kept many of 
his supporters from voting.  Son Chhay, a SRP MP, discussed a 
request to send a delegation of Cambodian MPs to Burma; John 
welcomed the proposed trip, stating Cambodia was a good model 
for Burma to emulate.  IFI representatives in Cambodia noted 
that the RGC has made some progress in planning for future 
oil/gas revenues, but more work needs to be done to ensure 
the petroleum sector benefits Cambodia by reducing poverty. 
End Summary. 
 
Kem Sokha:  Forced to Return to the Political Limelight 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  Kem Sokha informed visiting EAP DAS Eric John on 
April 6 that he would end his NGO position as the leader of 
the CCHR organization as of May 1; afterwards, he would form 
a new political party.  He explained that the reduction in 
funding to CCHR's activities by USAID over the last several 
years had created financial difficulties.  In addition, 
supporters from the around the countryside had mistakenly 
interpreted the funding cuts as indicative of USG unhappiness 
with Kem Sokha's leadership.  CCHR has been unable to secure 
additional funding from other donor states, he added, despite 
the submission of proposals to the European Union and others. 
 Fund-raising attempts abroad have yielded little additional 
income for CCHR, continued Sokha, as Cambodian-Americans and 
others are unwilling to fund NGO activities in Cambodia. 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  Finally, he said that people in Cambodia are 
looking for a new political party as an alternative to the 
status quo, and one that will really promote democracy.  DAS 
John asked if, from a tactical point of view, it made sense 
to create another opposition party rather than combine forces 
with the SRP.  Kem Sokha responded that the other political 
parties are not really democratic.  Initially, people thought 
FUNCINPEC was a democratic alternative to the CPP but it 
failed and now is nearly destroyed -- as witnessed during the 
recent commune elections, said Sokha.  When Sam Rainsy broke 
away from FUNCINPEC, many people followed him -- but the SRP 
has not proven to be a democratic party and Rainsy controls 
all the internal power and decisionmaking.  If the SRP comes 
to power, he noted, it may simply replace the CPP and 
transfer the power from one autocratic ruler to another.  If 
Rainsy reforms his party, acknowledged Kem Sokha, then the 
need for Sokha to create another party is removed. 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  Kem Sokha's vision of distinguishing his party 
from the others is to create a truly democratic party, with 
different centers of power within the party so that the party 
leader is not the sole decisionmaker.  The president of the 
party will remain as president for two terms; all officials 
will be elected by grassroots supporters.  Rather than a 
proportional electoral system as is in place in Cambodia, Kem 
Sokha favors a majority system with term limits for the Prime 
Minister.  All elections in Cambodia would be direct 
elections, rather than the indirect elections that favor the 
party in power -- as happens with the Senate, the governors, 
and the village chiefs, he noted.  Kem Sokha said his party 
will be future-focused, rather than constantly rehashing the 
problems of Cambodia's past and laying blame on other 
parties.  In response to accusations that Hun Sen and the CPP 
have quietly provided support to Kem Sokha to start a party 
in order to split the opposition vote, Kem Sokha denied the 
rumors and underscored that "Hun Sen can't buy me." 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  In terms of joining an alliance of opposition 
parties as Rainsy has called for, Kem Sokha said that he 
doubts an alliance with FUNCINPEC and the Norodom Ranariddh 
Party (NRP) would be of great use as the leadership of both 
parties has been discredited.  When asked if he could 
organize in time to compete for the 2008 national elections, 
Kem Sokha said that he already has 200,000 of the needed 
500,000 signatures/thumbprints.  He is also asking supporters 
for money to finance the new party, and claims that he is 
uninterested if well-known personalities defect to his party. 
 The key to his party's success, Kem Sokha noted, is support 
from agricultural workers and the grassroots supporters who 
backed his human rights NGO -- those people are the ones who 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000543  002 OF 003 
 
 
pushed him back to politics and they represent his base.  Kem 
Sokha is also looking to pair U.S. cities and their 
Cambodian-American population with different provinces, e.g., 
the Cambodian-Americans in Lowell, Massachusetts would be 
responsible for providing financial backing for his party's 
activities in Kampong Cham, Philadelphia for Prey Veng, 
California for Phnom Penh and Kandal, Seattle and Kampong 
Speu.  Kem Sokha said he estimates his party could win 30 
seats in the upcoming national elections. 
 
Rainsy:  Cambodia Now a Two-Party State 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  A buoyant Sam Rainsy, leader of the opposition 
party named after him, greeted Eric John by informing him 
that his party managed to double its number of votes and win 
25% of the overall vote in April 1, 2007 commune elections. 
He claimed that this was despite close to two million likely 
SRP voters being disenfranchised.  He urged USG to press the 
RGC to correct voting problems before next year's 
parliamentary elections.  Rainsy suggested that many of the 
problems could be corrected if the registration process was 
extended and simplified, and the CPP-aligned village chiefs 
were taken out of the process.  Rainsy also expressed his 
desire to unite the opposition to defeat the ruling CPP.  The 
Ambassador asked if Rainsy had consulted Kem Sokha recently 
about his new party.  Rainsy answered that he did not believe 
that Sokha's new party would be successful in the short-run 
because it lacked a nationwide network.  Tioulong Saumura, a 
SRP MP and wife of Rainsy, asked the Ambassador to mediate 
between Rainsy and Kem Sokha.  The Ambassador demurred and 
suggested talking to Sokha directly was the best and fastest 
way to resolve their differences. 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  Turning to Burma, Son Chhay, a senior SRP MP, 
informed the DAS that the National Assembly has been asked to 
send a delegation of MPs to Burma.  The DAS stated that Burma 
was one issue the USG, SRP and the ruling CPP appeared to 
agree; he said that Burma can look to Cambodia as a model for 
change and Cambodia was probably its closest model in ASEAN. 
John noted that though Cambodia's development has been filled 
with bumps, which the SRP knew about, its overall trajectory 
was positive and Burma could learn from it. 
 
IFIs and an Update on Donor Support for Oil/Gas Sector 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  At a lunch with International Financial 
Institution (IFI) representatives to discuss Cambodia's 
petroleum potential, conversation centered initially on 
estimates of the reserves.  Asian Development Bank (ADB) 
Deputy Purnima Rajapakse described the evolution of estimates 
in 2004 from 400 million barrels of oil in Chevron's Block A 
up to 700-800 million barrels.  More recently, there have 
been attempts to lower the estimates to reduce expectations, 
he said.  World Bank Country Manager Nisha Agrawal commented 
that some important decisions on managing oil revenue have 
been made, such as determining that the revenue should flow 
through the national budget, but that lack of reliable 
estimates hampered the government's ability to deal with 
other issues, such as whether the taxation issue should be a 
part of the petroleum law or the tax law.  This lack also 
gave the RGC an excuse to delay on issues; e.g., signing onto 
the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) 
agreement.  John Nelmes, IMF Resrep, catalogued the many 
issues regarding management and oversight of the expected oil 
revenue that require resolution. 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  In response to DAS John's question on whether 
Cambodia is likely to handle the oil revenue responsibly, 
opinions varied.  Agrawal said that signs so far were not 
promising.  The prospect of oil would allow Cambodia to 
borrow against future revenue, while China was pouring in aid 
money with "no strings attached," but in reality gaining 
access to Cambodian's natural resources.  Nelmes of the IMF 
and ADB's Rajapakse agreed that Cambodia probably would not 
be as bad as Nigeria, nor would it be Norway.  The Cambodian 
leadership would fund some beneficial projects to meet public 
demands for tangible proof that the RGC was using the money 
responsibly, and therefore the government would not be able 
to siphon off all of the revenue.  Nelmes commented that PM 
Hun Sen wants Cambodia to be taken seriously and would not 
want to see its reputation ruined by complete mishandling of 
the money.  Douglas Gardner, Resrep of UNDP, observed that 
whether it proved to be a blessing or a curse, oil and gas 
would change Cambodia fundamentally.  It was the job of the 
international community to work to make it as much of a 
blessing as possible. 
 
 
PHNOM PENH 00000543  003 OF 003 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU)  Kem Sokha held a farewell party at CCHR 
headquarters on April 10, and told members of the diplomatic 
community that he had met earlier in the day for several 
hours with the SRP.  Rainsy is keen to create a united front 
against the ruling CPP in 2008, although the media reported 
that the SRP leader publicly allowed that he could also 
envision working with the CPP.  Rainsy and Ranariddh's 
supporters from FUNCINPEC have often said that it would be 
unwise to publicly launch a united opposition to the CPP too 
early in the run up to the 2008 elections for fear that it 
would give the CPP more time to create divisions.  Rainsy's 
call for a united front suggests that he needed to seize on 
his undisputed second place position in the commune polls to 
solidify his claim to the opposition leadership mantle in the 
face of Kem Sokha's announcement that the NGO leader would 
return to politics.  Kem Sokha and Sam Rainsy have been 
eyeing one another warily since early 2006, when Kem Sokha 
was released from prison and began contemplating a return to 
politics, and Rainsy returned to Cambodia after the PM 
requested that the King pardon the opposition leader. 
Overcoming their differences (and respective egos) and 
working collaboratively against the CPP is unlikely but it is 
clear that a strong and united opposition would force the CPP 
to look more carefully at their reform agenda to prevent the 
opposition from using corruption, land grabbing, and impunity 
to the opposition's advantage in 2008.  End Comment. 
MUSSOMELI