Sam Rainsy and Hun Sen: the honeymoon is overEVEN before it has become clear quite how Aung San Suu Kyi can govern in Myanmar, the Nobel laureate’s electoral landslide has sent ripples across the neighbourhood—nowhere more so than in Cambodia. On a trip to Japan the country’s opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, could not resist comparing himself to Miss Suu Kyi. Her victory, he added, “has created panic among the last surviving dictators in our part of the world, but the wind of freedom …will also reach Cambodia in the very near future.”
Even if Mr Sam Rainsy’s claim to Miss Suu Kyi’s moral status is a stretch, the Myanmar parallel is not. The prime minister, Hun Sen, a former commander under the Khmer Rouge regime, has ruled Cambodia with an iron grip for 30 years, in part by rigging elections. After a recent period of rapprochement with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the government has turned mean again.
Late last month Kun Kim, the army’s deputy commander, who is very close to the prime minister, urged the removal of Mr Sam Rainsy’s deputy, Kem Sokha, as the National...Continue reading
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