The Human Rights Party will send each of its 18 newly elected commune chiefs on one-month study missions to developed countries to be schooled in commune-level strategy and leadership, the party leader said yesterday.

HRP president Kem Sokha told the Post that overseas party members are funding trips for its chiefs to visit Australia, the US, Canada and Europe as part of the party’s commitment to training during their five-year terms.

“What we have promised ,we will complete as part of our five-year plan. We will start it at the end of this year,” Kem Sokha said, adding that the party was already delivering on its election commitments including delivering six vehicles to be used for transporting sick people to hospitals.

“We do what we can do and we lead with transparency ... Our commune chiefs must learn how to draft budget proposals. We will introduce our commune chiefs to have good relations with nongovernmental organisations,” he said, going on to allege that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party was failing to uphold promises to protect the nation’s forest.

CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap offered congratulations for Kem Sokha’s political platform, while offering a rebuke of his own.

“If [Kem Sokha] can do it, it is better, but this allegation is just demagogy,” Cheam Yeap said, adding that the HRP should fulfill its promise to give US$10 to each old person in the communes it won.

To contact the reporter on this story: Meas Sokchea at [email protected]