The opposition is eyeing two leading civil society figures and deputy party leader Kem Sokha’s daughter to fill the three remaining slots the party holds on the nine-member National Election Committee, according to a high-level party source.
Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker-elect Kuoy Bunroeun has already been confirmed to take up one spot on the committee after vacating his parliamentary seat on Monday to make way for party leader Sam Rainsy, who was barred from running during last year’s poll.
The NEC is being overhauled as part of a deal struck last week between the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the CNRP that saw the opposition agree to end its long-standing parliamentary boycott.
Four members of the revamped election body will be appointed by each party and both sides have already agreed that Pung Chhiv Kek, president of human rights group Licadho, will be the ninth “consensus” member, though she laid out detailed conditions she wants fulfilled beforehand in an interview with the Post yesterday.
Kek the independent
A senior CNRP official who requested anonymity said yesterday that the party was considering Koul Panha, director of elections watchdog Comfrel; Yeng Virak, executive director of the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC); and CNRP deputy public affairs head Kem Monovithya for the remaining three positions .
“It is 99 per cent [certain] that these four people will be the NEC members, because they possess clear skills in electoral affairs. No one would be able to order them to do what they wish, and the party has confidence in them,” the source said.
Monovithya, 32, also confirmed she was being considered as a candidate, but said “nothing has been decided yet”.
“The CNRP has asked me if I would be interested. I am still considering.”
Monovithya, who assumed her current position in April last year, has a master’s degree in economics from the US and worked for the World Bank in Washington before joining the CNRP, which was formed when her father’s Human Rights Party merged with the Sam Rainsy Party before the 2013 election.
From 2003 to 2009, she worked in Cambodia for various NGOs and the Human Rights Party.