In Cambodia, leadership change for opposition

By Lauren Crothers

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AA) - Cambodia’s opposition party on Thursday confirmed Kem Sokha as its new president, after the exiled leader and co-founder stepped down from the position last month.

Sokha, the former deputy president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was confirmed by a show of hands at an extraordinary congress.

Three other party officials were confirmed as deputies.

In a speech, Sokha -- who spent five months in hiding last year to avoid what he said was a politically motivated court case -- said attacks against the party have so far failed “because the force of our yearning for nonviolent change through elections has already been born and fully grown in Cambodia, and no power, no matter how mighty, can stop this now.”

The change in leadership comes just months before the country is set to vote in local commune elections, which decide which parties gain and hold power at a grassroots level.

The next round of national elections will be held in 2018.

The CNRP was co-founded in 2013 by Sokha and Sam Rainsy, a long-time opposition figure whose presidency of the party was relatively short-lived.

The latter has been in exile since the end of 2015, when a years-old defamation prison sentence was reinstated against him.

In his resignation notice last month, he said he was stepping down from the role for the good of the party and amid a looming threat by the ruling party to amend legislation that would allow the Interior Ministry and Supreme Court new powers to dissolve political parties.

The National Assembly -- in the absence of CNRP members who staged a boycott -- passed those amendments late last month.