A briefly insightful information on Prime Minister Hun Sen’s leadership over the last 30 years, plus inside the text you will see many quotes from several famous political scientists, experts, economists, and politicians on Hun Sen’s political tactics and characteristics. All, it is desperately a must read for International Relations students, to understand more about what are hidden under Mr. Hun Sen’s leadership. “We will probably never know how much ‘the savage genocidal orders aimed at the Cambodian people’ displeased Hun Sen,” wrote The Bangkok Post’s Cambodia correspondent, Jacques Bekaert, four days after Mr. Hun Sen was named prime minister on January 14, 1985. “But there is little doubt that indeed Hun Sen felt very uncomfortable indeed with the strongly anti-Vietnamese attitude of some of the most prominent members of Democratic Kampuchea,” he wrote. “Hun Sen is still young, already brilliant, learning fast and traveling a lot. Some sources claim he is trusted by Vietnam more than Heng Samrin who, says one source, is not even any longer allowed to meet foreigners alone,” Mr. Bekaert concluded in the piece. A few months after Mr. Hun Sen’s regime renounced communism in April 1989 and renamed itself the State of Cambodia—apparently against the protests of Mr. Sim—The New York Times published a report titled “In Phnom Penh, Vietnam’s ‘Puppet’ Is Finding His Voice.” “To young people in Cambodia, who have no memory of Prince Sihanouk, Mr. Hun Sen represents modernity,” the New York Times noted. “Returning from Paris this month, he stepped off his airplane in a French double-breasted suit. He favors imported cigarettes and wears metal-frame glasses that help mask the scar from the shrapnel that took his left eye in 1975. “Mr. Hun Sen takes advantage of his differences with the Prince while publicly urging him to come home. Meanwhile, he cleverly explains the Prince’s failure to do so by saying that the Prince remains allied to the Khmer Rouge, a relationship most Cambodians find disturbing.” Yet behind a veneer of reformism, Mr. Hun Sen, who was negotiating the return of plural democracy to Cambodia with Prince Sihanouk, remained a creature of the communist party through which he had risen—dedicated to it as the vessel for exercising his power. Speaking at the Council of Ministers in June 1989, according to Mr. Gottesman, Mr. Hun Sen raised a pragmatic reason to move to privatize (to trusted allies) the industries that his government had worked so hard to build after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. “If there is a political solution, we want all state factories to become private factories,” Mr. Hun Sen said. “If we leave them with the state, we will face problems when the three parties [in Prince Sihanouk’s resistance] come and spend money that belongs to our factories, which we have operated for 10 years.” “As a survivor, he’s adaptable. He’s not doctrinaire,” said Sophal Ear, author of “Aid Dependence in Cambodia,” adding that the thread tying together Mr. Hun Sen’s 30 years in power has been a fidelity to his own interests. “He embraced capitalism with open arms and followed [Chinese communist reformer] Deng Xiaoping’s dictum: To get rich is glorious. His style of leadership has been populist with language the masses could embrace, but he’s also had an iron fist just in case,” he said. A U.N. report in August 1997 confirmed summary political executions of 41 opponents to Mr. Hun Sen, including Interior Ministry Secretary of State Ho Sok, who was killed inside his ministry. In a November 1997 BBC documentary, Mr. Hun Sen laughed off the damning U.N. findings. “There are probably no more than 50 people in Cambodia who have read the report. There are 11 million people in Cambodia. They don’t understand what the human rights report is about,” he said. “What the U.N. says doesn’t bother me. The problem is my people and whether they support me.” The U.N.’s human rights office in Phnom Penh reported a further 16 political killings in the two months before the July 1998 national election, which the CPP won, legitimizing Mr. Hun Sen’s power and allowing him to return as Cambodia’s sole prime minister. “His legacy is nothing, except for dictatorship. His rule is to threaten, to rob and kill others to smooth the way for him to stay in power,” said Pen Sovann, who was briefly the first prime minister of the regime that replaced the Khmer Rouge, before being purged and imprisoned in Vietnam for a decade. “From year to year, even after 1997 and in the 2000s, I have never seen any improvements in his leadership, except for the tears shed by poor people who have lost their land and property,” said Mr. Sovann, who is now an opposition lawmaker. “The problem with the democratic opposition is that, until recently, we were weak and divided,” Mr. Rainsy said in an interview this week. “It was not because Hun Sen was strong, but because his challengers were weak.” “I don’t think at this time Hun Sen maintains popular support,” Mr. Rainsy said this week, adding that he believes Mr. Hun Sen has shown that he is aware of his current vulnerability. “There is now a will from both sides to talk, to find resolutions to problems. One resolution is reforms, starting with the election reforms we have achieved. Now, the country is moving in the right direction.” Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, said that Mr. Hun Sen’s soft approach to Mr. Rainsy since the new “culture of dialogue” was announced last year is yet another example of Mr. Hun Sen’s usual methods. “Although the final chapter in his long career has yet to be written, Hun Sen still exhibits the political tactician’s skills to placate the opposition,” Mr. Thayer said, adding that Mr. Hun Sen nevertheless stands vulnerable. “Years of relative political stability, economic growth and the emergence of a technology-savvy younger generation are undermining the basis of Hun Sen’s nepotistic patronage network,” he said. “The time is now ripe for Hun Sen, who is by all accounts a very intelligent man, to consider how to manage his transition from power with dignity.” Yet David Chandler, a prominent historian of Cambodia, said that he did not believe the prime minister was ready to bow down to the CNRP threat. “I think he feels sure he can negotiate it. It’s clearly an enormous challenge, but he has enormous power (and financing, and foreign support) that the opposition lacks,” Mr. Chandler said in an email, adding that Mr. Hun Sen’s imprint on the country is nevertheless ensured. “Cambodia, when he retires (I doubt if this will follow an electoral defeat) will to a large extent be a reflection of policies he has invented and followed.” For the first time in his three decades, Mr. Hun Sen now faces an environment in which he cannot rely simply upon the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and in which savage political repression may only belie the death throes of a struggling regime. “The CNRP is a threat for the CPP if the CPP is unable to learn from the 2013 election results,” said Raoul Marc Jennar, a Cambodia historian and political scientist, who said Mr. Hun Sen must again adapt. “[T]he political terrain is now different. New generations are waiting for changes. People are more concerned by the future than they are by the past. The status quo is not an option,” Mr. Jennar said. Still, Mr. Ear, the author of “Aid Dependency in Cambodia,” said Mr. Hun Sen’s unique staying power as prime minister could extend to its natural limits. “I think he understood, even under socialism, that the future would not be socialist,” Mr. Ear said of the prime minister. “Just as is said of nation states, he has ‘no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.’ For him this means staying on top and valuing loyalty to his interests, but as the Buddha teaches, there are three things no one escapes: disease, old age, and death.” Read the full text: https://cambodiadaily/news/for-hun-sen-30-turbulent-years-as-prime-minister-76034/ The Cambodia Daily
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:42:04 +0000
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