Cambodia has certainly endured its share of turbulent times. Its
long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen will soon go to the polls. The Diplomat
profiles him here.
PHNOM PENH – Cambodia has never
enjoyed the kind of political clout its neighbors Thailand and Vietnam have
been able to assert on the international stage. This issue does not sit well
with Prime Minister Hun Sen, who wants to see his country’s standing improve
significantly.
But the key to raising Cambodia’s
stature is Hun Sen’s own success. After 28 years in power, he is by far the
region’s longest-serving elected leader.
His autocratic style and a
pronouncement that he would like to stay in power until he is 90 has won Hun Sen
stately comparisons with Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew from his friends…and less
flattering parallels with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe by his critics.
With the recent passing of
Cambodia’s former monarch Norodom Sihanouk — a constant political and royal
figure in Cambodian life for the last 70 years — and the bullying of opponents
out of electoral prominence, the 60-year-old premier now stands alone.
He likes to remind Cambodians and
foreigners alike that only he controls the military and the police, and that
the stability he delivered after ending three decades of war in 1998 has
underpinned the economic growth that is raising living standards across the
country.
That assumption of control gnaws
at human rights activists and civil society groups who squarely blame Hun Sen
for the ills that have afflicted Cambodia during the last 15 years of peace.
And there are many.
Corruption, electoral-related
violence and a culture of impunity among the politically connected and
well-heeled has created a rift between his government and the overwhelming
majority of Cambodians whose daily lives are still dictated by a hand-to-mouth
existence.
The killing of a high profile
environmentalist and the jailing of a broadcaster for 20 years in 2012 raised
the tempo on Cambodia’s human rights violations, which was a major focus during
last November’s visit by Barack Obama — the first trip to this country by a
sitting U.S. president.
“Hun Sen does get blamed for
every ill that blights this country but how much he really knows about what his
subordinates do and what he does about it — or what he does not do about it -–
remains tightly guarded,” said one long-term observer.
A Pagoda Boy with a Puritan Streak
Prudish with a famous temper, Hun
Sen was born in August 1952, the third of six children in central Cambodia. At
age 12 he moved to Phnom Penh to study while living in a pagoda, a common
practice for impoverished children who come in from the countryside to study.
A few years later, when the Khmer
Rouge were in the ascendancy, he became a foot soldier and rose to the rank of
deputy regional commander as the ultra-Maoists seized control of the country in
1975 and embarked on their bloody reign of terror. He married Bun Rany, a field
nurse, a year later in a mass ceremony.
Under Pol Pot, the communists
divided the country into sections and Hun Sen was deployed to the Eastern
Region of Democratic Kampuchea, as it was called during the Khmer Rouge era, an
area near the Vietnamese border that had largely escaped the massive purges and
executions. He lost his left eye during a firefight and says his sight is now
limited to 200 meters.
As the death toll mounted, so did
Khmer Rouge defections. The eastern zone of what was then Democratic Kampuchea
was targeted by Communist leaders, prompting Hun Sen to flee to Vietnam where
Hanoi was tiring of Pol Pot’s cross-border incursions and was assembling a
force of troops opposed to the Khmer Rouge.
The Vietnamese-backed offensive
was launched over Christmas 1978 and was completed two weeks later. The Khmer
Rouge was pushed into the country’s isolated northwest from where they
maintained a low-level civil war for the next two decades.
Hun Sen was rewarded and
fast-tracked through the ranks of the Vietnamese-installed government, becoming
foreign minister in 1979 and the world’s youngest prime minster in 1985 at age
33.
In the 1980s, he survived at
least three attempts on his life and was a constant target for assassination by
the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge and Western-supported insurgencies that had
coalesced along the Thai border and put aside their intense loathing of the
ultra-Maoists to fight a common enemy — a Vietnamese-sponsored regime.
It was a battle that lasted until
1989 and the end of the Cold War. A United Nations intervention aimed at
building a democracy followed Vietnam’s withdrawal and Hun Sen then took the
biggest gamble of his political career, convinced he would win the 1993 election.
But when he lost, his mean streak emerged.
Hugely embarrassed, he refused to
accept the results. Through his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), he maintained
control of the military and a 100,000-strong bureaucracy forcing the UN — which
had failed in its mandate to disarm the warring parties — to negotiate.
A cohabitation government was
formed with Prince Norodom Ranariddh of the royal Funcinpec Party as First
Prime Minister and Hun Sen as second.
Prince Ranariddh tapped into the
wealth of support commonly reserved for his father and the agreement was only
struck after King Sihanouk intervened and sponsored negotiations. The King also
bestowed on Hun Sen the title of “Samdech”, meaning “Lord”.
But the alliance was a disaster
from the start. Hun Sen used his forces to oust Ranariddh in 1997 and won
violence-marred elections a year later. In similar fashion, Hun Sen rounded up
the Khmer Rouge, amid mass defections, and finally ended decades of war in late
1998.
Only then could the marathon
efforts to put Pol Pot's surviving henchmen on trial for war crimes begin.
Over the next decade Hun Sen’s
political opponents were handled with ruthless efficiency, while the prime
minister maintained a public face of respectability, as peace took root.
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy still lives in self-imposed exile in France.
During this period, Hun Sen ended
illegal television broadcasts by pornography channels. In routine crackdowns on
the capital's risqué nightlife, he ordered women to wear dresses with hems below
the knees. Bars were closed and at times he even banned Western music and
dance.
Hun Sen holds the UN responsible
for introducing AIDS into Cambodia during the early 1990s and is prone to
exaggerating his golf handicap. More than 300 schools bear his name and he
loathes being referred to as a former Khmer Rouge cadre. Like many others, he
had little choice but to join.
The Push for Strategic Influence
In recent years, Hun Sen has
played a rough game of international diplomacy. He has pushed Cambodia firmly
within China’s sphere of influence, providing a buffer between U.S. ally
Thailand and Vietnam, a traditional enemy of both Cambodia and China.
He recently signed a military
deal with Beijing. The Asahi Shimbun reported that "Cambodia will use part
of a $195 million loan from China to buy 12 of its military helicopters and
boost its tiny fleet…"
This was not quite what Western
nations had in mind when they first reappeared in Cambodia alongside the UN
with generous offers of aid. However, Hun Sen says he tires of Western carping
over Cambodia’s human rights record and claims Chinese aid and soft loans
arrive with no strings attached.
That is questionable. Last year,
as Phnom Penh took its turn as chair of the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN), Cambodia acquiesced on regional unity and backed Beijing over
its stand on the South China Sea.
This split ASEAN like never
before and brought Cambodia into direct opposition with fellow members the
Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, which have competing maritime claims
with China in the disputed seas.
Such a stand raised Cambodia’s
diplomatic profile but proved costly in terms of relations with its nearest
neighbors, prompting reminders that the last time China held such sway over
Cambodian foreign policy was during the dark days of the Khmer Rouge.
As a result, Cambodia is walking
a political tightrope. This has the added dimension of Washington’s rebalancing
of power into East Asia. Further complicating matters is the record of Hun
Sen’s government, which includes long-standing accusations of corruption and
excessive use of violence. Indeed former King Sihanouk had long charged that
the government’s addiction to easy money had made Cambodia dependent on donors.
Hun Sen’s greatest asset — as
even his opponents acknowledge -– was that he secured what this country needed
most–peace. But Cambodia’s dark past is now consigned to the history books. If
Hun Sen truly is in control then he needs to combat corruption, end the culture
of impunity and punish those who have committed horrendous crimes of their own
in more recent years.
Luke Hunt
Business & Investment Opportunities
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