During the evening of Thursday 16 November, the European Union criticised the decision of the Cambodian supreme court to dissolve the main opposition party (the Cambodian National Rescue Party – CNRP) and to ban more than a hundred of its members from political life for five years.
Since the 2017 elections, the Cambodian authorities. have taken a series of measures against the CNRP.
"The decision on 16 November to dissolve the Cambodian National Rescue Party is a significant step away from the path of pluralism and democracy enshrined in Cambodia's constitution and supported over more than two decades by Cambodia's international partners", the spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS) stated in a press release.
The spokesperson called for the swift restoration of a situation "in which all parties, including the CNRP, their leaders and their supporters are able to carry out freely their legitimate functions". "An electoral process from which the main opposition party has been arbitrarily excluded is not legitimate", the EEAS spokesperson stated. General elections are planned in Cambodia for July 2018. The spokesperson said that the EU has repeatedly passed these messages to the Cambodian authorities, including after the current decision of the supreme court to dissolve the CNRP.
"Respect of fundamental human rights is a prerequisite for Cambodia to continue to benefit from the EU's preferential Everything But Arms scheme", the EEAS spokesperson stated. This scheme removes customs duties and quotas for all products except arms.
According to the spokesperson, the enforced dissolution of the CNRP effectively disenfranchises all those who gave the party their support in the elections in 2013 and 2017. The party won 44.5% of the vote in the 2013 parliamentary elections and 43.8% in the 2017 local elections.
The EEAS spokesperson stated that the EU was "glad" to support the electoral process that led to Cambodia's local elections on 4 June 2017, "which was widely recognised as having been professionally run by the National Election Committee and as having reached high standards of transparency and credibility". The situation has since gone downhill. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)