After nearly four decades as Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen goes into elections at the weekend certain of victory and vowing to eventually hand power to his eldest son, but the 70-year-old has given no timeframe for his dynastic succession and signaled he would continue to wield influence even after standing down.
Sunday’s vote is widely deemed a sham thanks to the near-total absence of genuine opposition parties, and critics say that more than 30 years after UN-brokered peace accords ended decades of bloody conflict, Cambodian democracy is in a sorry state.
“Nobody can block the steps forward of Hun Sen or Hun Manet,” the prime minister told voters last month. “After Hun Sen, it will be Hun Manet.”
Photo: AFP
While no fixed date has been given for a transfer of power, Hun Manet, 45, has taken on a number of his father’s campaign duties this year.
In a highly symbolic gesture at a rally for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) this month, Hun Sen passed the party flag to Hun Manet, who led a crowd of supporters on a march through Phnom Penh.
Hun Manet has also traveled around the nation to preside over ceremonies and meet troops, workers and CPP members, repeating his father’s campaign mantras of peace and development.
“As long as the CPP continues to lead the country, can keep the peace and can keep balance, we all live with happiness,” he said in a clip posted on Telegram this month.
Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said that the prospect of a dynastic handover “makes Cambodia look more like North Korea than a genuine democracy.”
Hun Sen has five children and has carved out political roles for all three of his sons, with the most senior responsibilities entrusted to his eldest, Hun Manet, already a member of the CPP’s powerful permanent committee, is to contest a parliamentary seat at the weekend for the first time.
He has served as commander of the Royal Cambodian Army since 2018 and met with foreign dignitaries and world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — the leader of Cambodia’s main ally and benefactor.
Hun Sen’s politics are shaped by his experiences of revolution and war as a young man during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.
Those privations molded him into one of the most effective — and most ruthless — politicians of his generation and made him prime minister in 1985, aged just 32.
He has since consolidated his power by co-opting, jailing, sidelining or effectively exiling any opponents. By contrast, his son was raised in luxury and educated abroad, including at the US military academy West Point, but a Western education is no guarantee of a more liberal approach, said exiled politician Sam Rainsy, a longstanding foe of the Cambodian prime minister, pointing to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is more educated than Hafez al-Assad, but the son is politically worse than the father,” Rainsy said.
Sebastian Strangio, the author of a book about Hun Sen’s rule, said that so far Hun Manet had shown “little evidence that he will introduce anything more than cosmetic reforms to the current political system.”
Without his father’s backing it is not clear Hun Manet would be able to make changes even if he wanted to and he remains untested in the political arena, said political analyst Ou Virak, comparing him to an unproven, if well trained, martial arts fighter.
“The problem is he’s been spoon-fed, mostly with a golden spoon,” Ou said.
“You put them in the ring, they are going to get knocked out first round. You have to allow them to fight, to spar, to survive,” he said.
Rainsy, who on Monday was banned from running for office for 25 years for urging people to spoil their ballots, said that without “a new leader drawn from outside the Hun family” there would be no change to Cambodia’s autocratic political system.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS