T AKEO - Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP) faction leader Ieng Mouly has
warned supporters not to attend rival leader Son Sann's planned party congress,
or face arrest.
Mouly said he considered the congress would be illegal,
and he believed the authorities would look at it in the same light.
"I
have already filed a complaint [about the congress] to the
government.
"If you go, you will be in trouble. If you are against the
party, you'll be arrested," Mouly told a BLDP conference in a Takeo theater Aug
27.
The conference was the first in a series Mouly said he planned to
hold around Cambodia, as he fights Son Sann for total control of the
party.
The conference voted, by a show of hands, to expel BLDP Takeo MP
Kem Sokha, a Son Sann supporter, as president of the party's provincial
branch.
The new president was announced as Dr Meas Yon, while Ma Sam was
appointed his first deputy.
Pong Khemra, the former first deputy, told a
crowd of about 500 people that he would replace Kem Sokha in the National
Assembly when the MP lost his seat.
Ieng Mouly has said he intends to ask
the National Assembly to expel Sokha and five other BLDP MPs on the basis they
are no longer party members.
Mouly, in his nearly two-hour long speech to
the Takeo conference, defended the legality of his own party congress in July,
which passed a vote of no confidence in Son Sann and his main
supporters.
Mouly said the congress was legal because the government had
supported it.
"Hun Sen sent a letter to [offer] support and to mark the
congress and the First Prime Minister also showed his support [by making a
statement] through television and radio broadcasting."
Mouly recalled the
festering internal rift between himself and Son Sann. He said Son Sann had
treated him so badly since the 1993 election that he could no longer tolerate
it.
Sokha, in Takeo on the same day, criticized Mouly for saying that
people who attended Son Sann's congress would be arrested.
"I think that
his speech is a cheat, a lie and a threat to the rights of our citizens. I hope
the government would not do what he says."
Sokha said some of the people
at Mouly's conference, who had spoken against him (Sokha), came to apologize to
him later that day.
