PHNOM PENH, July 23 (AP): Hun Sen has been Cambodia’s autocratic prime minister for nearly four decades, during which the opposition has been stifled and the country has grown increasingly close to China.
With his Cambodian People’s Party virtually guaranteed another landslide victory in Sunday’s election, it’s hard to imagine dramatic change on the horizon. But the 70-year-old former communist Khmer Rouge fighter and Asia’s longest-serving leader says he is ready to hand the premiership to his oldest son, Hun Manet, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point who heads the country’s army.
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Tens of thousands of supporters packed a central square in the capital before daybreak on Friday to hear the 45-year-old’s 7 am kick-off to the CPP’s final day of campaigning before the vote.
With a warm smile and soft tone, a stark contrast to his father’s stern look and military-like cadence, Hun Manet said the CPP had brought peace, stability and progress to the Cambodian people.
“Voting for the Cambodian People’s Party is voting for yourselves,” he told the cheering crowd, promising to return Cambodia’s national pride to a “greater level than the glorious Angkor era” of the Khmer Empire, centuries ago.
After he cast his ballot Sunday, Hun Manet told reporters that he just came to vote “as an ordinary citizen,” then left without other comment.
With the only credible challenge to the CPP barred from participating in the elections on a technicality, Cambodians are being offered little choice but to vote for the ruling party again. The arrests over the past week of several leading opposition figures have served to help stifle visible support for anyone but the CPP on the streets of Phnom Penh.
“Authorities in Cambodia have spent the past five years picking apart what’s left of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association,” Amnesty International’s Montse Ferrer said Friday. “Many people feel that they are being forced to participate in this election despite their party of choice not being on the ballot.”
There was, however, a palpable sense of excitement at his pre-election rally as Hun Manet walked through the crowd of some 60,000 shaking hands and taking selfies, before taking a position next to his wife in the back of a pickup truck for a long parade through the city.
Sixteen-year-old Sin Dina, one of many young people who turned out, jumped up and down and waved the Cambodian flag as Hun Manet drove slowly by, said it was the first time she had the opportunity to see him in person.
“He looks like a gentleman, down to earth, approachable, and he’s well-educated” she said, adding she only regretted she was too young to vote. “He’s an appropriate successor to his father.”
Many in the crowd spoke of Hun Manet’s education — his bachelor’s at West Point being followed by a master’s at New York University and a doctorate in economics from Britain’s Bristol University.
His background has given rise to hope from some in the West that he might bring political change, but it will still take work to regain influence in the Southeast Asian country of 16.5 million, given China’s strategic and economic importance, said John Bradford, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“A Cambodia led by Hun Manet might very well be a stronger U.S. ally, but the U.S.-Cambodia relationship can only thrive if it is built on strong fundamentals of common benefit and mutual respect,” Bradford said. “U.S. diplomats should focus on these things.”
At the top of Washington’s concerns is China’s involvement in construction at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, which could give Beijing a strategically important military outpost on the Gulf of Thailand.
Ground was broken last year on the Ream project, and satellite imagery of the ongoing construction from Planet Labs PBC taken about a month ago and analyzed by The Associated Press shows a jetty now large enough to accommodate a naval destroyer, if the water is deep enough.
Regionally, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Cambodia chaired last year, has criticized Phnom Penh for undermining its unity in disputes with China over South China Sea territorial claims.
It is not clear when — or even if — Hun Sen will hand off to his son during the next five-year government term, though most seem to think it will happen early enough for Hun Manet to establish himself in the job before the next election.
Both men refused requests to be interviewed by The Associated Press.
Even when Hun Manet does take over, Bradford said it might not mean any change at all, noting that educational and personal background do not necessarily translate into leadership style or political stance.
