Cambodian People's Party

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(Redirected from Khmer People's Revolutionary Party)

CPP symbol

The Cambodian People's Party (Cambodian: Kanakpak Pracheachon Kâmpuchéa, KPK) is the current ruling party of Cambodia. The party was called Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (often referred to by its French acronym 'PRPK') 1981-1991, and was the sole legal party in the country at the time. The party has an outright majority in the National Assembly of Cambodia, but governs in coalition with the royalist Funcinpec party. The current (as of 2007) Prime Minister, Hun Sen, is the vice president of the party.

The party was constituted in early 1979, as pro-Vietnamese forces within the Communist Party of Kampuchea held a congress, and thus formed a separate party (but retaining the same name, CPK). A national committee led by Pen Sovan was appointed by the congress. The organization considered itself as the genuine inheritor of the original KPRP founded in 1951 (which had evolved into the CPK), and labelled the congress as the '3rd party congress' (thus not recognizing the 1963, 1975 and 1978 congresses of CPK as legitimate). The party considered June 28, 1951 as its founding date. The existence of the party was kept secret, until its 4th congress in May 1981 when it appeared into public and assumed the name KPRP. The name-change was done 'in order to clearly distinguish it from the reactionary Pol Pot party and to underline and reassert the [continuity] of the party's best traditions'.^[1]

General Secretary of the party 1981-1985 was Pen Sovan.^[2] The KPRP was a Marxism-Leninism party, although it took on a more reformist outlook in the mid-1980s. The 5th party congress in October 1985 elected Heng Samrin as new General Secretary of the party.^[1]

In 1991 the party was renamed the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) during a UN-sponsored peace and reconciliation process.