Victorious again at the polls, Prime Minister Hun Sen has cemented his reputation as one of Asia's canniest leaders -- a political chameleon with a ruthless streak.
Born the son of peasants, Hun Sen was educated by Buddhist monks. When civil war broke out he fought with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia's killing fields, but then defected and took power with the help of invading forces from neighboring Vietnam.
As democracy emerged, he dropped his communist ideology and reshaped his image as a nationalist and strongman.
Whether by the ballot or the bullet, Hun Sen has been at the center of Cambodia's political scene since 1985 when he became the world's youngest prime minister at age 33. He has held or shared the top job ever since.
Yesterday, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party said it expects to control about 73 of the 123 seats in the new National Assembly following weekend elections.
Time and again, he has shown his mettle in overcoming challenges and adversaries, beginning with a US-led diplomatic boycott that isolated his poverty-stricken country during the 1980s.
Among those he has bullied, outfoxed or outgunned include his one-time co-prime minister Norodom Ranariddh, the Khmer Rouge and the UN. Some say he plays the game of politics better than those who set the rules. It's not surprising he loves chess.
Critics accuse Hun Sen of failing to address such problems as endemic corruption and providing tacit immunity for lawbreakers with official ties. But even his critics agree that he is intelligent and hardworking, in a country's whose politicians are generally noted for indolence.
When his grip on power was less firm, political opponents feared for their lives. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy once described him as a "murderer."
Influential US Senator Mitch McConnell called him "nothing less than a paranoid evil dictator."
"His tough talk is unimpressive and only underscores his complicity in the numerous and violent episodes of Cambodia's more recent past," he said.
At the same time, Hun Sen has rallied the grassroots support of the farmers who make up the vast majority of the country 12.8 million people. Cambodia's rural landscape is dotted with schools, temples and roads upon which he has bestowed his patronage.
"I want to develop my country like the other Southeast Asian strongmen did," he told his biographers. More than one-third of Cambodians live on less than US$1 per day.
Born on April 4, 1951 to a peasant family in Kampong Cham Province, 80km east of Phnom Penh, Hun Sen as a boy worked the rice fields before being sent to the capital to be educated by Buddhist monks.
But when he was 19, Hun Sen responded to a call to arms from King Norodom Sihanouk, then a prince in exile in Beijing after being ousted in a 1970 US-backed coup.
Hun Sen joined the sole organized opposition to the coup-makers, the previously marginal communist Khmer Rouge, who had allied themselves with the ousted Sihanouk. He would lose his left eye in the bitter civil war.
The prince and the peasant boy had little idea that when the Khmer Rouge would take over five years later, they would launch a revolutionary reign of terror that would claim the lives of 1.7 million of their countrymen.
Though he attained the rank of regimental commander, there is no reason to believe Hun Sen played a part in Khmer Rouge atrocities, according to historians. His June 1977 escape to neighboring Vietnam made him one of the earliest high-ranking guerrilla defectors.
Young leader
When Hanoi's army drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, Hun Sen, at age 27, was named foreign minister of a single-party, Soviet-style regime which hosted a Vietnamese occupying army until 1989.
After becoming premier in 1985, he moved to negotiate Cambodia's 1991 Paris peace accords -- between his government and a resistance coalition including the Khmer Rouge and royalists -- that eventually led to a 1993 UN-supervised election.
Although his Cambodian People's Party came in second to the royalist FUNCINPEC party led by Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Hun Sen used threats of violence to get himself named co-prime minister.
He took total control after ousting Ranariddh in a lightning, bloody coup in 1997. Some of the ablest leaders of FUNCINPEC were summarily executed after capture.
The events made Cambodia an international pariah state but put Hun Sen in a position of strength from which he was able to cut several deft deals.
He dictated the terms under which the all-but-spent Khmer Rouge insurgents put down their arms, and took credit for bringing peace to his war-torn country.
Hun Sen's international legitimacy was largely restored by the simple expedient of allowing Ranariddh to return to run in 1998's general election.
Having shattered and terrorized his opposition, Hun Sen's party won the polls with a plurality, and co-opted Ranariddh into joining his government coalition as a toothless junior partner.
He used the same hard bargaining tactics with the UN during five-year negotiations that ended last month to set up a genocide tribunal for the Khmer Rouge.
He spurned all compromises until he had his way -- a tribunal operated under Cambodian law. It will have to approved by the new National Assembly.
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