The king and I

Benny Widyono (L)

Feb 5, 2013
By Benny Widyono
Asia Times Online

Cambodia's former monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, was cremated on Monday in a custom-built crematorium at the Meru field next to the royal palace in the capital Phnom Penh. Millions of Cambodians, most of whom have not known life without the charismatic monarch, are believed to have witnessed the elaborate cremation in an outpouring of national mourning.

First crowned king by French colonialists in 1941, Sihanouk dominated the country’s politics for over seven decades, variously as monarch, prince, head of state, prime minister, head of the Khmer Rouge government, chairman of the post-civil war coalition government, head of the Supreme National Council, and again as constitutional monarch from 1993 until he abdicated for health reasons in 2004.

I first met the flamboyant and versatile prince in New York in the 1980s. I was fortunate to be invited to Sihanouk’s much coveted annual song and dance parties held at the Helmsley Hotel near the United Nations’ headquarters. While the king’s parties were colorful and lively, with the monarch crooning renditions of Tea for Two and That's What Friends Are For, a note of gloom hung over the occasions while his country was still torn by civil war.

After Vietnam invaded Cambodia, ousted the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, and installed its own People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) government in 1979, the United Nations instead recognized the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). The coalition operated from refugee camps in neighboring Thailand and included elements of the Khmer Rouge and Sihanouk's royalist Funcinpec movement.

With the Cold War in full swing, the Soviet Union and its communist allies predictably recognized the pro-Vietnam PRK government. This stalemate of two governments continued until the Paris Peace Accords were signed in October 1991, establishing the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). UNTAC was tasked with holding elections and paving the way for national reconciliation.

Sihanouk's annual soirees in New York were held while he campaigned for the CGDK against the PRK at the UN's General Assembly. That included a diplomatic and often revealing relationship with UNTAC administrators, this writer included.

"I wish to thank you, Excellency Mr Yasushi Akashi, for sending another prince from Java to help bring peace to Cambodia," Sihanouk quipped in August 1992 to UNTAC's then senior most administrator in reference to myself.

The occasion for the quip was the inauguration of UNTAC's provincial headquarters, where I served as a shadow governor. Akashi was the head of UNTAC while Sihanouk served as head of the Supreme National Council, a symbolic authority that represented Cambodian sovereignty during the UNTAC-led transitional period.

While not a prince, I did indeed hail from Java, Indonesia. Sihanouk's learned joke baptizing me as the second prince of Java had its origins in the year 802, when Prince Jayavarman II was proclaimed a universal monarch, or Deva Raja, (God King). To this day, the peasants who make up the bulk of Cambodia worship Sihanouk as the last Deva Raja of Cambodia.

During my UNTAC tenure, I got to know Sihanouk intimately. At one point, I was asked by my UNTAC superiors to accompany Sihanouk by helicopter to the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge to see how they were preparing for the upcoming elections. Because he was using UNTAC helicopters, Sihanouk requested that a senior UNTAC person accompany him.

Although he was put under house arrest during most of the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule - during which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodian's perished - Sihanouk had earlier made common cause with the group after the pro-American general Lon Nol overthrew his neutral government in a 1970 coup. He was thus seen by the UN as an important interlocutor to the Khmer Rouge, which had fought an effective guerilla campaign after being toppled by Vietnamese forces in 1979.

We boarded a small six-seater French military helicopter in Siem Reap and landed at Pailin, the lugubrious Khmer Rouge headquarters, which was off limits to UNTAC. The pro-Khmer Rouge population who were trucked in from surrounding villages gave Sihanouk a thunderous welcome. They were attired in colorful new dresses imported from neighboring Thailand and looked relatively prosperous compared with the poverty-stricken people in nearby PKR-controlled areas.

At lunchtime, I was invited to join a banquet of Khmer Rouge top brass in honor of the royal couple. Khmer Rouge leaders, including Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, and Son Sen, and I flanked the prince and princess. Pol Pot, the radical group's leader, was apparently lurking in a nearby room watching. Ieng Sary's daughter, who had studied in London, prepared a sumptuous Khmer nouvelle cuisine lunch served with Mouton Cadet, Sihanouk's favorite French wine.

From my vantage point at the end of the table, I was able to observe firsthand the bizarre relationship between Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge's leadership. Their strange conversation that day centered on the concept of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and Friday the 13th as a Western superstition.

The Khmer Rouge top brass continuously teased Sihanouk that he had stopped his amorous escapades after marrying Princess Monique, his sixth official wife. Sihanouk turned to me and confirmed with his inimitable cackle that Princess Monique kept him in chains and would never again allow him to look at other women.

Perpetual crisis

After UNTAC left Cambodia, I was appointed as the United Nations secretary-general's representative to Cambodia. It was then that I truly got to know Sihanouk. I arrived in April 1994 in time to watch yet another tumultuous welcome for Sihanouk, who then arrived from Beijing as king and nominal head of the Royal Government of Cambodia, the post-election coalition that was recognized by all global countries.

Underscoring unresolved tensions, the government was headed by two prime ministers, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Sihanouk's son, and Hun Sen, the PRK's prime minister since 1985. The Khmer Rouge, however, maintained their arms and continued to challenge the new coalition government's authority in the territories it controlled.

On May 1, 1994, I was granted an audience with the king. After exchanging formalities, we were led to a smaller room with a huge map of Cambodia. Here, Sihanouk went into great detail in outlining the crisis caused by the Khmer Rouge's then ongoing counter-offensive, which dominated our conversation that day.

In highly animated fashion, Sihanouk predicted that the Khmer Rouge, buoyed by its recent military successes, would try to proclaim a separate state in an outer northern crescent of territory bordering on Thailand. The prince cackled and told me that behind the room's huge curtains many spies were lurking with secret microphones linked variously to the Khmer Rouge, Ranariddh and Hun Sen.

That day, he was thinking aloud about what to do to save Cambodia from yet another crisis. He complained that the coalition government did not take him seriously, while expressing a striking lack of confidence in the co-premiers. It was quite evident from our conversation that Sihanouk was unhappy with his position as a king who reigned but did not rule.

"They wanted me to be somewhere up in the sky above Cambodia," he said at a private dinner where he lamented agreeing to the co-premiers' push to creation a constitutional monarchy.

In June 1994, Sihanouk unveiled yet another plan to retake the reins of power. From self-exile in Beijing, where he would spend much of the rest of his life, he summoned veteran Far Eastern Economic Review journalist Nate Thayer for a long interview, during which he accused the coalition government of being incapable of halting the deterioration of the country's politics.

"How can I avoid intervening in a few months' time or one year's time if the situation continues to deteriorate?" he asked during the bombshell interview.

To be sure, Sihanouk was never fully marginalized. He published his writings regularly in his Bulletin Mensual de Documentation (Monthly Bulletin), which can now be read online. He often handwrote biting letters, commentaries and annotations to newspaper and magazine articles on Cambodia in English and French, lavishly decorated by multiple exclamation marks and under linings.

The bulletin provided an outlet to criticize the governance of the co-premiers and wield influence. When the coalition government became more internally strained, the writings of a man known as Ruom Rith suddenly appeared in his bulletin.

Ostensibly, Ruom Rith was an old friend of the king; he was his exact age and supposedly lived somewhere in the French Pyrenees. They shared identical writing styles, alive with exclamation points and multiple - up to four or five in a row - question marks. Whereas the king was restrained in criticizing Hun Sen, Ruom Rith was quite outspoken.

It was commonly believed in Phnom Penh that Ruom Rith was a pen name for the king himself - although the monarch vigorously denied it. Later, during tense periods leading up to the bloody 1997 confrontation that saw Hun Sen oust Ranariddh, other alter egos of the king appeared. In some instances, they even began to argue with each other in the bulletin. The king appeared to enjoy this role play, choreographing with obvious amusement his own private puppet show.

Due to poor health, Sihanouk abdicated the throne for a second time in 2004. He handed down the crown to his unmarried and childless youngest son Norodom Sihamoni, who presided over today's elaborate cremation ceremonies. After Sihanouk stepped down, the National Assembly bestowed the title of "the Great King Hero, Father of Independence, of Territorial Integrity and National Unity" on the former monarch and politician.

At today's cremation ceremony, most Cambodians will indeed remember Sihanouk as the father of Cambodia, the man who gave them independence, strove for peace and reconciliation, and ultimately saved their small but distinct country from disappearing off the map.

Benny Widyono is a retired United Nations civil servant from Indonesia. His last position was the UN secretary-general's representative in Cambodia, 1994-97. He is the author of Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk (Rowman and Littlefield).