CAMBODIA: Poll Win to Make Premier Longest-serving Leader in Region

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 8 2003 (IPS) - South-east Asia is getting ready to see the last of the region’s longest serving prime minister – Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, who steps down in October after 22 years in power – but it will not have to wait much longer for his successor.

The leader most qualified to succeed Mahathir is Cambodia’s Hun Sen, who became prime minister of his war-ravaged country in 1985, when it was under Vietnamese occupation, and has retained power since then.

Yet to achieve the status of being the region’s longest-serving leader, Hun Sen has to form a successful coalition government when Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk convenes the new session of the National Assembly on Sep. 27.

This would then give him a crack at not only matchng Mahathir’s 22-year record of being prime minister, but surpassing it in the coming years. Hun Sen has been Cambodia’s prime minister for 17 years.

The Cambodian leader would also be joining the club of South-east Asia’s long-serving heads of government who have ruled with authoritarian zeal, such as Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s prime minister for 31 years, Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine president for 21 years, and Suharto, Indonesia’s president for more than three decades.

But the signs since the Cambodia’s Jul. 27 national election – the third after peace was restored in 1991 following decades of bloody oppression and conflict – have not been completely in Hun Sen’s favour.

Hun Sen is up against a new political alliance formed by the two leading opposition parties that are refusing to let him secure the two-thirds of the 123 seats in the National Assembly that he needs to form Cambodia’s next government.

At the July poll, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won 73 seats, the royalist FUNCINPEC party got 26 seats and the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) got 24 seats.

The CPP fell short by nine seats to secure the required two-thirds majority as stipulated in the country’s constitution and form a government of its own.

”The current tension is part of the post-election bargaining process we have witnessed since the 1993 and 1998 elections,” says Kao Kim Hourn, executive director at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, a Phnom Penh-based think tank. ”This is normal. What is new is we have two parties working together to negotiate.”

The FUNCINPEC-Sam Rainsy Party alliance has informed the CPP that it will not support a government led by Hun Sen, but is willing to offer the required number of seats to form a coalition government with an alternative leader.

It is a view, however, that raises questions about their understanding of democracy. ”The opposition alliance’s demand that Hun Sen should not be the prime minister goes against the principles of democracy,” Kao said during an interview with IPS.

”The losing parties cannot dictate terms to the winning party,” he adds. ”When the people voted for the CPP, they were aware that Hun Sen had said he wanted to be the prime minister in the new government.”

”I don’t agree with opposition alliance,” Pen Samitthy, editor of ‘Rasmei Kampuchea,’ Cambodia’s Khmer-language daily newspaper with the largest circulation, told IPS. ”The situation will change, with the support for the alliance reducing if this deadlock is not resolved soon.”

But the opposition’s seeming animosity towards Hun Sen – led by Sam Rainsy, the former finance minister who heads the SRP – stems from the record the CPP leader has gained as a politician who has no qualms intimidating his opponents with harsh tactics.

At the 1993 elections, for instance, Hun Sen refused to hand over power to the party that won the poll, FUNCINPEC. He muscled his way to the top by agreeing to form a coalition with the royalist party’s leader, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, as the first prime minister and Hun Sen himself as the second prime minister.

Then in 1997, he forced Prince Ranariddh out of power, and the CPP was tainted by the estimated 100 people, many of whom were supporters of the prince, who were murdered after his ouster.

At the 1998 elections, Hun Sen’s party won the poll after using violence to suppress support for the opposition. The politically related violence included 11 murders and close to 140 cases of intimidation, according to records at U.N. human rights body in Cambodia.

At that poll, the CPP secured 64 seats, FUNCINPEC gained 43 seats and SRP, 15. Hun Sen struck a deal with FUNCINPEC to form a coalition needed to govern.

But in the aftermath of this year’s general election, the governing CPP is coming in for unusual praise for enabling a poll that was more fair and free than previous occasions – and despite negative perceptions outside Cambodia of Hun Sen.

”This election was better than the one in ’98 or ’93, although it did not reach the international standards of an election,” says Pen.

”The mandate given by the people to the CPP is clear. And because it was a cleaner election than the past, it gives Hun Sen some legitimacy,” adds Kao.

On Thursday last week, the Australian government added its voice to the chorus of independent election observers who said that despite criticism of Hun Sen and the government, Cambodia’s poll was worthy of praise.

”I welcome the report by the four Australian parliamentarians who observed the elections that, despite some minor irregularities, there was widespread consensus that the electoral administration process and broader political environment showed greater improvement over previous elections,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.

The loudest criticism levelled against the Cambodian polls and Hun Sen’s victory have come from sections of the U.S. political establishment, including those who were open in their support toward Sam Rainsy.

But as Thailand demonstrated in mid-August, Hun Sen appears to have won new respect since the July poll. The Thai government denied entry to Sam Rainsy, had planned to speak to the foreign media here as part of his global campaign to challenge Hun Sen’s quest to remain Cambodia’s prime minister.