Hun Sen Survives Past to Control Cambodia’s Present

If Cambodia is to have a new strongman, Hun Sen has the right resume, according to both his friends and enemies.

The second prime minister, who controls Phnom Penh, the capital, after a coup d’etat last weekend, is described as a masterful politician with a record of astutely manipulating Cambodia’s vertiginous political scene to his own advantage.

While Hun Sen’s admirers say he has always been careful to operate within the bounds of the law, his critics charged long before the takeover that he intimidated opponents and sponsored violence to further his political agenda. Now his forces are accused of mass arrests and two political executions.

Born into a peasant family, Hun Sen never finished high school. But he has repeatedly outmaneuvered his archrival, First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh, the son of a king and the recipient of a French doctorate of law.

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Hun Sen has shown the courage and the cunning to survive and rebound from: a stint with the Khmer Rouge; the death of a child; the loss of an eye in battle; the 1989 withdrawal of the Vietnamese, who had installed him as leader of occupied Cambodia; and defeat in 1993 elections sponsored by the United Nations.

The former Communist guerrilla now has a son studying at West Point.

“He is a very honest man, very able, very clever,” said Yukio Imagawa, a former Japanese ambassador to Cambodia who has known Hun Sen since 1990 and considers him a friend. “He is one of the best [politicians]--and not only in Cambodia.”

As Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s special envoy to Cambodia, Imagawa was one of the last diplomats to see Hun Sen before heavy fighting erupted Saturday between troops loyal to the two Cambodian prime ministers. The clash has called into question the survival of the Cambodian democracy brokered by the U.N. nearly four years ago.

Imagawa and a French envoy had a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Hun Sen on June 26--and left with “no idea” of the impending armed confrontation, said the diplomat, who was interviewed in Tokyo.

“Hun Sen is a consummate chess player, and he is always thinking two moves ahead,” a Western aid worker said.

Hun Sen’s personal history has clearly honed his survival skills. According to French author Raoul M. Jennar, Hun Sen was born in 1952 in Kompong Cham province. He quit high school and fled Phnom Penh in 1968 after the arrest of his mentor, a leftist Buddhist monk.

He wound up a Khmer Rouge operative in Mimot, near Cambodia’s border with Vietnam, but fled to Vietnam in 1977 after reportedly learning that he was to be arrested in the widening purges ordered by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

Hun Sen returned with the invading Vietnamese army, which overthrew Pol Pot in 1979. He became foreign minister for the new Vietnamese-backed government.

He became head of government in 1985, and kept up relations with Vietnam even after the departure of its army four years later. In 1991, he was awarded a doctorate in political science in Hanoi. He visited Vietnam again days before the coup, though there is no evidence to support accusations that he sought prior approval from Hanoi.

One of his proudest achievements in office is to have built about 1,200 schools. In a recent speech dedicating a school in Mimot, Hun Sen emphasized his populist credentials in contrast to Ranariddh’s elite French education.

“Some people are very proud that they studied overseas, but they do not know the life of the poor,” he said. “More than 10 million people don’t have the chance to study overseas. . . . Hun Sen is proud to be the prime minister of the poor people.”

After 14 years spent in power working in the name of Cambodia’s impoverished millions, Hun Sen was shocked to learn he had lost the 1993 elections. His Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, won 38% of the vote, while Ranariddh’s royalist FUNCINPEC party took 45%.

The CPP “struggled for 14 years to keep the country going, to keep people from starvation,” a Western diplomatic source said. “All of a sudden, the international community came and snatched away what they’d built.”

Hun Sen refused to accept the election results, and hinted of a return to civil war, prompting King Norodom Sihanouk to propose the post of second prime minister. Hun Sen and Ranariddh, Sihanouk’s son, cooperated for several years, but their political marriage of convenience became strained a year ago when Ranariddh began to demand more power-sharing.

Hun Sen balked, systematically set out to weaken the FUNCINPEC party, and was seen to be succeeding. Some observers wondered why he resorted to a military solution just when a political victory over Ranariddh looked inevitable.

“He is brilliant,” a Cambodian human rights activist declared in despairing tones last week, describing how the CPP had kept near-total control over the nation’s vital judicial system, despite an agreement to share key posts with FUNCINPEC. The source complained that the “weak” Ranariddh did not fight back until it was too late.

“But don’t use my name,” the activist said. “Hun Sen could make revenge. He could send someone to throw a grenade at this office--easily.”

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy sent an open letter to Hun Sen accusing him of masterminding a March 30 grenade attack on an authorized demonstration led by Rainsy’s Khmer Nation Party. Four grenades were thrown into the crowd, killing about a dozen people and wounding more than 100, including a U.S. citizen.

FBI sources have tentatively blamed Hun Sen’s bodyguards for the grenade attack, though the Hun Sen camp has called the accusation “ridiculous.”

Rainsy has now joined Ranariddh in lobbying the international community not to recognize a Hun Sen-led government.

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Hun Sen, however, has insisted it is Ranariddh who has broken the law by illegally importing nearly three tons of weapons, bringing Khmer Rouge fighters into the capital and secretly ordering other troop deployments.

Hun Sen said military action was necessary to “defend social order, people’s safety and national security against terrorist acts” and “to prevent the return of the genocidal [Khmer Rouge] regime to massacre the people anew.”

Hun Sen is now trying to find a cooperative FUNCINPEC figure who is willing to replace Ranariddh as party leader. He will probably succeed. But the recent violence, which reportedly killed 58 people and wounded 200, seems to have embittered the Cambodian public and irrevocably damaged his international image.