Cambodia: Is the Hun Sen era coming to an end?

 Cambodia: Is the Hun Sen era coming to an end?

Young voters could deny ‘heaven’s mandate’ to Phnom Penh’s strongman, writes Asia Sentinel’s James Pringle

 Associated Press | Asia Sentinel | 17 July 2013

The Chinese call it the “mandate of heaven,” the right – supposedly bestowed from above – that permits ruling emperors or communist party bigwigs to rule until, in the course of time, they fall or are pushed aside.

In Cambodia, that “right” for the past 28 years has belonged to Hun Sen, an autocrat who glories in his unofficial title of “strongman.” He was placed in power by the Vietnamese army after it invaded Cambodia in 1979 to oust the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot, under whose rule 1.7 million people died from a variety of reasons, not least plain murder.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Pic: AP.

Inevitably, as in all dictatorships, a leader will begin to wobble and, in a drawn-out process, eventually fall. That hasn’t happened to Hun Sen, who at 61 still believes he has many years at the helm as Southeast Asia’s longest serving elected leader. He has said, not necessarily as a joke, that he will be in power until age 90.

But observers here say there are intimations of vulnerability that were not perceived before, not least the phalanxes of hundreds of free-spirited young people, many of them women, on motorcycles, waving flags with a rising sun logo, around Phnom Penh, and who are loyal to the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), a coalition of two parties which came together in July last year.

Five years ago such girls would have been spending their evenings over quiet dinners with extended families. Now they’re on the streets at all times with a burning political message of change.

They pass other groups of regimented and undemonstrative young people in white T-shirts, who belong to the Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP), and who are nonetheless not allowed to talk to reporters – they have little to say anyway – and look like rent-a-crowds on a US$5 a day retainer, or at least something from the former East Germany.

As they pass each other in the snarled traffic, they – so far good-naturedly – hold up seven fingers, signaling the CNRP’s official number in the eight political parties taking part in the election, meaning they have to take both hands off their motorbike handlebars. The CPP supporters wave four fingers for their random number in the election line-up.

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