2023-07-23 10:23:50
July 23, 2023 at 10:18 am
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Hun Sen has made sure he has no real challenger in this election.
Polls in Cambodia’s general election ended this afternoon local time. The country’s prime minister, Hun Sen, has been in power for 38 years, but the only opposition party capable of challenging Hun Sen was disqualified in May before the election.
Voters in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh told the BBC they expected Hun Sen’s People’s Party (CPP) to sweep all 125 seats in parliament again.
In addition, the 70-year-old Hun Sen revealed that he will hand over the baton to his son Hun Manet.
Cambodia, which practices a constitutional monarchy, has had good relations with China since the time of Prince Sihanouk. In 2020, after China announced the outbreak of the new crown epidemic and closed the city of Wuhan, Hun Sen made a high-profile visit to China on February 5 of that year, and said that he would go to Wuhan, where the epidemic was most severe, to visit Cambodian students there. Because the Chinese side said it could not be arranged, it only visited Beijing.
“rigged election”
“It was a rigged election because there was no real strong opposition party,” a local voter told the BBC earlier this week.
Western countries, including the United States, have also expressed concerns about the fairness of the vote. People don’t really have a choice, and in order to ensure the highest possible turnout, the government has criminalized any attempt to boycott elections or disrupt votes.
In May, the government banned the country’s main opposition party, the Candlelight Party, from running in elections, citing technical issues. The National Electoral Commission said the party lacked a document that was not required for local elections last year.
Candlelight won 22 percent of the vote in last year’s local elections – a party that analysts say Hun Sen sees as a potential threat to his rule.
Lee Morgenbesser, an expert on dictators at Australia’s Griffith University who has followed Hun Sen for years, said Hun Sen “killed Candlelight” long before they became a significant threat.
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Cambodia established a democracy in the 1990s, but its ruler, Hun Sen, has refused to relinquish power.
A Candlelight Party representative told the BBC this week that “we have put a lot of energy and resources into organizing and running our campaign and we have candidates in every seat.”
“At the last minute, disqualified because of an administrative requirement that hadn’t been done before – he changed the rules mid-game.”
The BBC has spoken to several Candlelight party leaders this year. But it has become increasingly dangerous for them – with many arrests in recent weeks. The two leaders were captured by Thai police in Thailand last week as they tried to flee to the United Nations offices in Bangkok.
There were 17 other parties on the ballot, but they were all small or allied to the governing party and therefore insignificant.
Cambodian voters may be familiar with this scene.
A few years ago, Cambodia’s ruler launched the most brutal crackdown of his career to eliminate his opponents.
Facing popular opposition, Hun Sen has used the courts to dissolve political parties that threatened his rule. A large number of MPs were expelled from Parliament and leaders were arrested.
After defeating his opponent, he won the 2018 general election six months later, winning all 125 seats in the Cambodian National Assembly.
38 years in power
Hun Sen, 70, has ruled Cambodia since 1985. A former Khmer Rouge official who defected to Vietnam before the regime fell.
For nearly 40 years, he has consolidated power through a network of interests including the military, police and intelligence agencies, and has often billed himself as the world’s longest-serving prime minister.
Over the years, he ousted opponents by co-opting, imprisoning, exiling or otherwise.
In the 1990s, the United Nations tried to turn Cambodia into a democracy after the terror of the Khmer Rouge regime. But political analysts say Cambodia is now an authoritarian one-party state, and Hun Sen is a dictator.
But elections in Cambodia have not all been meaningless over the years.
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Supporters of the Cambodia National Rescue Party in the 2013 general election
Hun Sen was shocked in 2013 when a coalition called the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), led by Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, got 44 percent of the national vote.
The CNRP was even ahead of the BJP at one point that night – prompting the government to interrupt live TV counts across the country.
Cambodians sensed that regime change was imminent — tens of thousands of people attended the rally that year.
Astrid Noren Nillson, an analyst who was in Phnom Penh in 2013, said, “There is a triumphant and wild political energy that can be felt on the streets, especially among young people.”
The opposition led protests in the months since, disputing Hun Sen’s victory. Facing the biggest challenge to his power to date, he relinquished some power and negotiated a truce. But in 2017, when the Cambodia National Rescue Party challenged him again in local elections, he didn’t back down.
He used the BJP-controlled parliament to pass a law disbanding any political party on security grounds. He then used his new powers to get the Supreme Court to dissolve the CNRP.
About 100 members of the party were indicted, leading to the exile of several top party figures.
In 2018, Hun Sen’s Cambodia People’s Party won all 125 seats in parliament after the main opposition coalition was dissolved by a politically controlled court.
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Hun Sen at the beginning of his administration in the 1980s and Hun Sen in July 2023
Nielsen, who was in Phnom Penh again this week, said that before 2017-18, Cambodia’s politically competitive landscape was very different from what it is now.
A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the BBC that “(now) everyone is very depressed and dispirited. It started almost on January 1 – as soon as he handed over the chairmanship of ASEAN, a new round of repression began.”
Analysts say Hun Sen’s tactics are well known. He used bribes and bribes to promise people government positions and land. This year, there has been a wave of defections not only from the Candlelight Party, but also from trade unions and peasant groups.
Morgenbesser said that when he failed to win these men over, his goal was to crush them.
Earlier this year, opposition leader Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years in prison on suspicion of treason, and the main news outlet, the Voice of Democracy, was shut down.
“I am hopeless about the situation,” said the Phnom Penh voter mentioned above. A decade ago, in his early 20s, he voted for the opposition and was passionate about change.
The eldest son succeeds?
Hun Sen voted in the capital early Sunday morning. Hun Sen’s eldest son, Hun Mane, has sided with his father, leading the uncontested campaign.
Although Hun Sen is running for re-election, he has indicated that this may be his last term. Hun Sen has revealed that he is planning to hand over power to Hun Mane, who is now the top leader of the Cambodian army.
It was not until Thursday that Hun Sen said it was “likely” that his son would become prime minister within three to four weeks, without giving a timetable for the transition of power.
Hongmane received a Western education. The above-mentioned diplomat commented, “I don’t think he is the great savior of Cambodia’s democracy, but I think he has a sense of reform and would like to improve relations with the West.”
Others have been candid about their concerns about dynastic rule. One voter told the BBC, “We’re a democracy. From father to son – that’s not very democratic, is it?”
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Hong Mane may succeed his father as prime minister.
Relations with China
The friendly relationship between China and Cambodia began in April 1955, when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai met Sihanouk, the head of the Cambodian government, at the Bandung Asian-African Conference.
Since then, the two countries have exchanged frequent visits. In the 1970s and 1980s, Sihanouk once lived in China for a long time. Sihanouk died in Beijing in October 2012. China sent a special plane to transport Sihanouk’s coffin back to Phnom Penh. The then State Councilor Dai Bingguo escorted him randomly as a representative of the Chinese government.
The United States imposed sanctions on senior Cambodian officials in 2019, and the European Union imposed trade sanctions on senior Cambodian officials suspected of abusing power in 2020.
For Hun Sen at this time, China’s support is extremely important. Among the foreign capital introduced into Cambodia, 70% of them are Chinese capital.
At that time, when the new crown epidemic broke out in China, Hun Sen made a high-profile visit to China on February 5, 2020, and said that he would go to Wuhan, where the epidemic was most severe, to visit Cambodian students there. Because the Chinese side said it could not be arranged, it only visited Beijing.
Hun Sen became the last head of state that Xi Jinping met before the epidemic.
After China ended the zero-clearing policy, Hun Sen visited China again in February 2023, and brought his son Hong Mane to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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