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Each politician, particularly one whose chokehold over a rustic lasted practically 4 a long time, wants a while off. Hun Sen, who handed over the prime ministership of Cambodia to his eldest son final summer time, has had his toes up for the previous seven months.
Not that he’s been idle; he’s nonetheless president of the ruling celebration and head of the King’s Privy Council, and has often intervened to publicly chide his son for some errors. However after the Senate elections on Feb. 25, he’ll be coronated as the brand new Senate president.
The place will make him appearing head of state when King Norodom Sihamoni is in a foreign country, as he typically is for well being checkups in China. With Cambodia now a Hun household fiefdom, you’ll have Prime Minister Hun Manet as head of presidency and Hun Sen as de-facto head of state.
What does it matter, chances are you’ll ask, since Hun Sen is already all highly effective? However the query accommodates the reply.
Clearly, Hun Sen doesn’t consider himself that manner or else why would he need the Senate presidency? Certainly, he said on the day that he resigned as prime minister final July that he would turn into Senate president, so clearly this had been determined when the ruling celebration was crossing the T’s on its huge succession plan in 2021 and 2022.
Furthermore, it’s not a risk-free transfer. It means the present Senate president, Say Chhum, has to retire. This has the additional benefit of pensioning off one other graying ruling celebration grandee and one who some assume controls a rival faction inside the celebration. Say Chhum had agreed to resign final yr, maybe protected within the data that his household’s patronage networks at the moment are within the arms of his son Say Sam Al, the land administration minister.
However for these within the celebration (and there are some) offended that the CPP has turn into a family-run affair, the Hun duo as heads of presidency and state gained’t sit effectively. Hun Sen said final July throughout his resignation speech that by changing into Senate president, “I cannot intrude into the tasks of the brand new prime minister,” but it surely definitely seems that will to some.
Furthermore, it seemingly goes towards the spirit of the celebration’s generational succession scheme through which the getting older “first technology” CPP leaders (Hun Sen included) had been purported to retire from frontline politics and provides formal powers to the “second technology”, even when the elders nonetheless referred to as the pictures behind the scenes. So why not give the Senate presidency to a youthful, “second technology” politician?
Provided that the CPP took years to meticulously plot this succession course of – so it can’t be that they had been caught in making a choice about who would turn into Senate president and Hun Sen was the simplest choice to fill the void – the one logical conclusion is that Hun Sen desires the Senate presidency as a result of he thinks he wants it. First, it’s going to enable him to journey overseas on state visits or welcome visiting leaders in an official capability, which he hasn’t been in a position to do since August.
Regardless of having been the world’s longest-serving head of presidency, he by no means gained acceptance as a world’s statesman, definitely not one spoken of with the identical reverence as Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore. The Senate presidency would possibly give him one other decade or so to aim to say such a mantle.
Second, in response to some, it provides him official diplomatic immunity, which can come in useful sooner or later sooner or later. Third, and whereas one ordinarily should keep away from psychoanalyzing politicians, it’s possible that Hun Sen detests being away from frontline politics and never having the ability to make public shows of his energy, so possibly it’s the case that he’s taking the Senate presidency just because he can.
Institutional seize
Now 71, he has been a senior politician because the age of 27, and he by no means appeared the sort to take pleasure in retirement nor to shrink back from publicity. Hun Sen is rarely happier than when delivering a three-hour monologue to a crowd of bussed-in employees. However he’s had few alternatives to take action since August, though that’s partly as a result of he has wished to offer his son the limelight. As Senate president, he can have a captive viewers (in additional methods than one) once more.
Fourth, and maybe most significantly, the Senate presidency provides him but extra institutional energy to intervene if one thing was to go unsuitable along with his son’s authorities – or, certainly, if there was ever a putschist try towards Hun Manet.
Keep in mind that Hun Sen has repeatedly stated he would return as prime minister if any main disaster befouled the federal government; the insinuation being that his trip from the premiership could also be non permanent. For the very best a part of a decade, the Hun household has been on an extended march by way of the establishments, cautious that a few of its rivals can also be on their very own such mission.
At the moment, he has the King’s ear as head of the Supreme Privy Advisory Council. He controls the highly effective however unruly (and fast to disgruntlement) enterprise tycoons, the oknha, as president of the newly-formed Cambodian Oknha Affiliation.
He’s additionally president of another CPP-linked “uncivil society” teams. By way of constitutional reforms in 2022, he vastly weakened the facility of the Nationwide Meeting to reprimand ministers or the prime minister, and in 2023 he helped make the loyal however politically weak Khuon Sudary the brand new president of the decrease chamber of parliament. These steps gave much more energy to the CPP over personnel decisions.
He has vowed to stay CPP president probably for all times and Hun Manet was made the fifth vice-president in December. He has packed the ranks of deputy prime ministers with loyalists. In reality, his youngest son, Hun Many, was made the eleventh deputy prime minister this month. His household cemented its management over the military.
Hun Manet was beforehand military chief, a publish that went to Hun Sen’s trusted and notorious bodyguard Mao Sophan final yr. Hun Manith, one other of his sons and head of navy intelligence, was made deputy military chief on the similar time.
Whereas the Huns management the military, the Tea clan – the patriarchy of former protection minister Tea Banh, who handed down energy to his son Tea Seiha final yr – controls the navy.
So, taking up the Senate is one other institutional seize for the Hun household, giving added safety to the Hun Manet administration ought to there be indicators of unrest amongst CPP parliamentarians or, if Manet decides sooner or later to permit an opposition celebration to compete in elections, from opposition lawmakers.
Provided that senators have a six-year time period, he might stay president of the higher home till 2030, when he will likely be 77. However, then once more, he has lengthy stated his supreme retirement age will likely be 74. Maybe he won’t ever step apart.
David Hutt is a analysis fellow on the Central European Institute of Asian Research (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist on the Diplomat. As a journalist, he has coated Southeast Asian politics since 2014. The views expressed listed here are his personal and don’t mirror the place of RFA.
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