Cambodia’s Political Truce Breaks Down

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The ‘culture of dialogue’ in Cambodian politics already appears to be history.

By Joshua Kurlantzick

An excellent article in this month’s Foreign Affairs, by Stephanie Giry, outlines the strategies Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has used to stay in power.

Now the longest-serving nonroyal ruler in Asia and the seventh-longest serving nonroyal ruler in the world, Hun Sen remains the ultimate survivor. He is a man who was one of the youngest foreign ministers in the world in the period after 1979, when he served in the government installed in Phnom Penh after Vietnam invaded and removed the Khmer Rouge. He was a former military man who made a gradual transition from the unschooled, rugged but naturally savvy former fighter from that time to a suave and charming head of government.

For three decades, according to human rights groups, Hun Sen has used a combination of populist charm, control of the media through relations with media tycoons, outright intimidation, and relatively effective management of the economy to stay in power. Cambodia holds elections, but the deck tends to be stacked heavily against the opposition, with TV networks, the election commission, and other critical actors historically favoring the ruling party.

In 2013, after his party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), suffered a shock setback in national elections, nearly losing control of parliament to the opposition, Hun Sen appeared more conciliatory toward the opposition. Despite its virtual control of all broadcast media, Hun Sen and the CPP now faced a major challenge from young, urban Cambodians who could organize through social media and the Internet, and did not have the loyalty to the CPP that their parents and grandparents displayed.

For many of these young Cambodians, Hun Sen’s basic promise of a rough kind of stability, after the destruction of the Khmer Rouge era, was not enough to vote for the CPP. In the wake of the opposition’s strong election showing, Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy embraced each other and agreed to foster a “culture of dialogue” that, in Cambodia’s often-brutal politics, had been lacking in the past. Hun Sen allowed the opposition to get a license to run its own television station; terrestrial broadcast media had been dominated by stations that were pro-Hun Sen and pro-CPP, according to multiple human rights groups.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. This post appears courtesy of CFR.org.

source: http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/cambodias-political-truce-breaks-down/