Crude remarks uncalled for

10/02/2010
Bangkok Post

Prime Minister Hun Sen grabbed headlines but lost much in his unreasonable and personal outbursts. The words he used were hardly the phrases of a statesman or diplomat. It is hard to see what the Cambodian leader hoped to gain by aiming rude, personal abuse at Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. The hard-line nationalists back home already support Hun Sen's unceasing attacks on PM Abhisit and other Thai leaders. The Thai prime minister did the right thing by ignoring the repeated and primitive verbal assaults; so it is Hun Sen who lost face.

The ex-Khmer Rouge troop commander first came to international attention in 1979, shortly after the Vietnamese invasion installed a regime friendly to Hanoi. Thus, at 27, Hun Sen gained a sort of fame as the world's youngest foreign minister. With many years in the post, it seems something of a shame that the Cambodian politician failed to learn the niceties of international diplomacy. There is no justification for using the sort of language he was quoted as using on a Cambodian website, even as he was visiting border regions.

The Khmer-language website may have been directed to Cambodians, but Hun Sen knows as well as anyone that these days, there is nothing local on the internet. In any case, his words were directed at PM Abhisit personally, as in "You are the robber" and "It is none of your business" how Hun Sen dresses. Such direct, personal and in-your-face insults would be intolerable if Cambodia and Thailand were in conflict. Under current circumstances, this disrespect for a fellow Asean prime minister says far more about Hun Sen than about PM Abhisit.

The Thai premier should continue to do what he is doing, which is handling day-to-day government work while ignoring the highly contemptible comments from his counterpart. The only possible direct reply to the low comments from Hun Sen would mean to stoop even lower. Thus, the proper reply is indirect. Relations between Thailand and Cambodia are at a low ebb, without doubt. But small numbers of misguided hotheads on both sides apart, there are thankfully no indications that any responsible officials on either side want actual hostilities.

It is troubling that Hun Sen would take advantage of the moment in this manner. He conducted a tour of part of the Thai-Cambodian border while managing to avoid provocative actions. Standing up to the stronger neighbour to the west probably won him some political support back in Phnom Penh and the provinces. But his outrageous demand to barge into Surin province with armed guards showed a lack of statesmanship. His wish on the website for "evil events to befall" PM Abhisit is diplomatically indefensible.

In many ways, Hun Sen appears determined to exploit the tyranny of the weak. This is the concept that a strong opponent must accept abuse from one which is smaller and weaker, or be seen as a bully. One hopes Hun Sen's campaign will quickly fade and not become, as the writer Oscar Wilde once proclaimed, "the only tyranny that lasts".

If Hun Sen does not feel he owes an apology - which he does - he certainly owes everyone some moderation. It is understandable that crude remarks are occasionally uttered in the heat of argument. But Hun Sen has clearly decided to take the measure of PM Abhisit and a few other officials in the most vulgar manner. He should reconsider this sort of distasteful rhetoric, which certainly fails to advance his own cause.