Hun Sen's Consolidation: Death or Beginning of Reform?

Summary

Introduction

Events of 2004 were the dénouement not only of the national elections of July 2003 and subsequent political deadlock, but of the decade of political transition since the departure of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), and even of the course of Cambodia's political trajectory since the end of French colonialism. The UNTAC elections of 1993 aimed at restoring the country's independence and peace following ten years of communist Vietnamese occupation and insurgency against them and their Cambodian protégées. The elections were intended to launch the country on the path of liberal democracy, free market economics and human rights. None of these had existed in Cambodia since the early 1950s, in the twilight of French colonialism and early years of King Norodom Sihanouk's reign, when nascent liberal democrats and Khmer Issarak insurgents contested his control of the French-constructed administrative state. Democracy, market economics and human rights were suppressed under Sihanouk's postindependence Sangkum regime, murderously expunged during the 1975–78 rule of the Khmer Rouge, and repressed under the Vietnamese who liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot, but imposed their own colonial-like, socialist state-building project.

The UNTAC mandate over Cambodia and the years since have been analogous to the earlier period of contestation for control of a post-colonial state in Cambodia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. 2004 saw it end with the overwhelming victory of prime minister Hun Sen and his political and economic entourage, self-made men who emerged out of the apparatus created by the Vietnamese and the beginnings of market liberalization in the late 1980s. Their decisive triumph may determine the trajectory of Cambodian politics for many years to come. Their political juggernaut is interknit through marriages among children of key players, including premier Hun Sen, deputy premier Sok An, national police chief Hok Langdy and army procurement czar Moeng Samphan.