Ex-Khmer Rouge commander to run in general election

AP ^ | 2003-07-02

[Tailgunner Joe]

A former Khmer Rouge guerrilla commander will run for parliament in July's general election as a candidate for the ruling Cambodian People's Party, which defeated the rebel movement almost five years ago.

Y Chhean, who used to be a division commander with the guerrillas, will run in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin in northwestern Cambodia, the party's cabinet chief Tep Ngorn said yesterday.

Y Chhean, 50, becomes the highest-ranking former Khmer Rouge official to ever contest a free Cambodian election.

He is currently governor of Pailin province, a post he assumed in 1997 after he joined thousands of other Khmer Rouge in following the group's former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary in a mass defection to the government a year earlier.

Their defection marked the final unraveling of Cambodia's communist movement, which waged guerrilla warfare after being unseated from power in early 1979. In 1998 the group's leader, Pol Pot, died, and fighting ceased.

In gratitude for their defection, the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen - head of the Cambodian People's Party - allowed Ieng Sary and his confederates to remain the main power-brokers in Pailin.

One house seat will be at stake in Pailin in the July 27 national election, which will choose a 123-seat National Assembly from which a new government also will be formed.

In the last election, a candidate from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party won the Pailin seat, beating Keut Sothea, a former deputy of Y Chhean.

Y Chhean could not immediately be reached for comment on his campaign plans.

But Keut Sothea, speaking by phone from Pailin, described him as "an influential and capable person."