Cambodia Leader Touts Power Sharing
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Communal power sharing that will follow Cambodia’s first local elections will help prevent renewed war, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday.
Speaking to visiting French diplomats at his home in Phnom Penh, the capital, Hun Sen, whose party swept Sunday’s polls, said single-party control of local politics had been a recipe for violence.
“To avoid war, it was necessary to hold [local] elections and end the single management of communes,” or clusters of villages, Hun Sen was quoted as saying by his spokesman.
Although Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party won nearly 1,600 of the 1,621 commune chief positions, its rivals, the royalist FUNCINPEC and opposition Sam Rainsy Party, secured many deputy chief posts.
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