Cambodians were shocked and worried when revered King Norodom Sihanouk announced his decision last week to abdicate after six decades at the stormy center of his country's often brutal history.
But far from abandoning the 13 million subjects he fondly refers to as his children, Sihanouk -- a master of political maneuvering -- seems to be playing one last hand to ensure the survival of the monarchy, experts say.
PHOTO: AP
"I was quite surprised when I read the news," said Bee Ieng, a 33-year-old driver of a motorbike taxi waiting for customers near the Royal Palace.
"I think this time it's real because he had been talking about abdicating for some time already."
Before he could say what might happen next, he zoomed his bike across the street to pick up a foreign tourist emerging from the yellow-walled palace, where the king has not been since January, when he left for an extended stay abroad.
So Nan, a 40-year-old government employee, feared political instability might ensue after the king's abdication since he "has always been the father of the nation and national reconciliation."
"I'm very worried about what his abdication will do to our country," agreed Taing Say, 70, who pedals a bicycle rickshaw for a living.
Cambodians his age remember how peace and prosperity prevailed under the leadership of Sihanouk until 1970, when he was ousted by Phnom Penh's pro-American elite, who declared a republic and left him in exile.
A vicious civil war followed, ending in a 1975 victory for the communist Khmer Rouge insurgents with whom Sihanouk cast his lot against his usurpers, sparking violence that cost the lives of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians -- about one quarter of the population at the time.
When a Vietnamese invasion ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Sihanouk was freed from house arrest at his palace and went back into exile. He started a fresh struggle, leading a guerrilla alliance to war against a Hanoi-installed regime, and then leading peace talks which bore fruit with UN-organized elections in 1993.
Restored as a constitutional monarch after the polls, he has since served as the country's conscience as its politicians dithered and bickered.
The king, who will turn 82 at the end of October, has long had health problems. Doctors who examined him last month found a stomach problem, feared to be a reoccurrence of cancer that first showed up in 1993.
Especially frustrating for Sihanouk, says his official biographer Julio Jeldres, has been the failure of the country's political leaders to address urgent problems including poverty, corruption, injustice, and the failure to make proper preparations for the king's successor.
He insists he will not return to Cambodia until a Throne Council is formed as mandated by law, and his successor chosen.
But several Cambodia experts and foreign friends believe he is attempting to preserve the monarchy, about which Prime Minister Hun Sen has shown ambivalence in the past. Jeldres says one of Sihanouk's main concerns "has been that after him the monarchy may cease to exist."
"My quick reaction is `never say never' with King Sihanouk," says Bernie Krisher, a longtime friend and publisher of the Cambodia Daily newspaper. "By abdicating he hopes to avoid the confusion and impasse that might occur if he died and there was no clear map as to what might follow."
David Chandler, a foremost historian of modern Cambodia, calls Sihanouk's move a ploy against Hun Sen, who, the scholar thinks, "probably would not like anyone on the throne at all."
"No one gains from political uncertainty in Cambodia," says Chandler. "Sihanouk knows this and is playing one more deal of the cards." And he is clever enough, notes Chandler, to back Prince Norodom Sihamoni, one of his sons by Queen Monineath, whom Hun Sen would not find threatening as king. Sihamoni, 51, has long lived abroad.
Vong Kimhou, a 43-year-old peasant from central Kandal province, took his wife and four-year-old child to visit the Royal Palace for the first time Saturday. Both agreed they missed something important during their tour.
Vong Kimhou said he saw Sihanouk's portraits from the 1960s on display inside the palace but "there's no king living there."
"I feel the palace is empty," he said. "Now, it's a kingdom without a king."
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