BY SAING SOENTHRITH | OCTOBER 9, 2014
More than 1,000 people rallied in front of the Pailin City home of Y Chhien on Wednesday to demand that he remain in his position as chief of the provincial council, despite there having been no announcement to the contrary, the provincial governor said.
Lieutenant General Chhien, 63, has been at the head of the provincial council since June, when he stepped down from his post as provincial governor, which he had held since Pailin was carved out of Battambang province in 1996.
Supporters of Pailin provincial council president Y Chhien rally outside his home Wednesday in response to rumors that he would be removed from his position. (Van Sreymao)
Contacted Wednesday, Koeut Sothea, the former deputy provincial governor who replaced Lt. Gen. Chhien in June, said he was unaware of any plans for his former boss to vacate his current position.
“I did not hear that His Excellency Y Chhien has resigned,” Mr. Sothea said. “I am following this news.”
Ly Samith, a provincial information department official, said rumors had been swirling for a few days in the remote northwestern province that Mr. Chhien—a four-star military general and Pol Pot’s former bodyguard—would relocate for a job in Phnom Penh.
Mr. Samith said he had heard that the government had ordered Lt. Gen. Chhien to resign and that a replacement had been selected, but that nothing had been made official.
“His Excellency Y Chhien will be replaced by Lai Chan Chhay,” he said he was told by multiple people inside the government.
Brigadier General Chan Chhay, the former Pailin provincial police chief who retired in May, could not be contacted Wednesday.
Lt. Gen. Chhien and Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak also could not be reached.
Duch Son, director-general of the Interior Ministry’s general department of personnel, said the rumors of Lt. Gen. Chhien’s resignation were just that, and noted that as the council chief was an elected official, forcing him out of the job would be illegal.
“It is just a rumor circulated from one person to another,” he said.
Mr. Son said that in a telephone conversation with Mr. Sothea, the governor, he was informed that Lt. Gen. Chhien returned to his home at about 5 p.m. Wednesday and asked his supporters: “Why are you all gathering in front of my house? I have not left you.”
In the months leading up to his resignation as governor, Lt. Gen. Chhien was dragged into a land dispute when a company owned by his second wife, CPP lawmaker Ban Sreymom, ordered villagers off a tract they claimed to have been farming since 1999.
Mr. Samith, the information official, said Ms. Sreymom was extremely unpopular among locals in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold, and speculated that this could be related to her husband’s removal.
“Y Chhien’s wife used too much of Y Chhien’s power and made our ex-Khmer Rouge families disappointed with her actions,” he said.
“Before, in the Khmer Rouge time, Y Chhien would have one grain of salt and we would all share it to eat one big bowl of rice. But after his wife came, we can’t even go to his house anymore.”
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