Honeymoon between Cambodian political chiefs turns sour as polls approach

Hun Sen and Ranariddh toasting each other in 2001. Today, their political marriage is on the rock.

The Associated Press
September 30, 2006

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia There were smiles, hugs and champagne toasts when Cambodian strongman Hun Sen and his top political rival signed a deal to be partners in a ruling coalition — but few doubted that Hun Sen could torpedo the pact any time he wanted.

Now, two years later, the honeymoon appears over between Hun Sen and his junior coalition partner, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who last week was reduced to pleading with his own royalist Funcinpec party not to heed the prime minister's advice to oust him as their leader.

The war of words is no coincidence: Hun Sen is trying to maximize his Cambodian People's Party's chances for a clear-cut victory in a local election six months away.

Ranariddh, meanwhile, is scrambling to keep his weak and fractious party together.

The 2004 coalition deal raised fragile hopes for a new era after almost a year of political stalemate, when Hun Sen could not form a government because his party had failed to win the legally required number of parliamentary seats.

Once the pact was struck, Ranariddh's party was pretty much Hun Sen's ideal junior partner — quiet and acquiescent.

But Hun Sen, in a Sept. 17 speech delivered in a rice field, said the royalist party ought to find a new chief to replace Ranariddh.

The ruthless, wily politician blamed Ranariddh's weak leadership for the repeated defeats of the prince's party in local and general elections over the past decade.

"Facing a wise and strong enemy is better than having a naive and weak friend," he said, adding that if he were Ranariddh, he "would have resigned a long time ago already."

"There's no point staying on," he said. "I say it's time for Funcinpec to find a new leader."

Ranariddh responded in a speech broadcast several days ago.

"I've never poked my hands into the CPP's internal matters. So, I ask that he and his party please stop stirring their arms and legs in my party affairs," he implored.

It was not the first clash between the two men, whose political stars come from different galaxies.

Ranariddh is the son of Norodom Sihanouk, the country's retired but still-revered king, who founded Funcinpec and whose name helped the prince's party win a U.N.-organized 1993 election.

The prince has spent much of his life in France, and does not conceal his enjoyment of the finer things in life, dining at Western restaurants whenever he's in Cambodia.

Hun Sen, born to a peasant family, looks comfortable wading barefoot into Cambodia's muddy fields to plant rice beside rural folk.

He is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who spent much of his youth and lost one eye fighting the Cambodian civil war. He has led the country since the mid-1980s, exercising a strongman's prerogatives in a democratic framework while deftly dispatching opponents with a divide-and-conquer strategy.

In 1997, he grabbed full control of the government after toppling Ranariddh as his co-prime minister in a violent coup.

Ranariddh — who is not noted for political acumen, moral fortitude or inspiring leadership — later came back. Except for occasional hard bargaining to divide the spoils of power, he has since been content to be his rival's junior partner.

Their latest partnership is based on their June 2004 agreement to end an 11-month deadlock that followed the 2003 general election.

"I remember that it was like a honeymoon between the two leaders. They promised to share power and interests," said Kek Galabru, president of the human rights group Licadho and one of the country's few independent political observers.

But their current contretemps doesn't surprise her.

In April 2007, Cambodia will hold local elections whose results could determine how the parties fare in a 2008 general election, she said.

The jockeying for advantage began this past March, when Hun Sen's party engineered a voting rule change that lets the parliament pass legislation with a simple majority instead of two-thirds. This meant the CPP no longer needed the support of Ranariddh's lawmakers.

In protest, Ranariddh resigned as National Assembly president, and has since spent most of his time abroad.

Hun Sen meanwhile has been on a bruising drive to remove Funcinpec officials from the government.

Still, Kek Galabru cautioned against taking the two men's quarrel too seriously.

"There is no end and no beginning for the politicians," she said. "They can make all the statements attacking each other, but if their common interests come together, they can go along another time together."

"They can be enemies today, and tomorrow they can kiss and hug each other again."