Cambodia’s P.M. Hun Sen, in power for decades, cruising to another term in Sunday vote

BANGKOK — The result is hardly in doubt, but significant changes could be on the horizon as Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, cruises to an expected reelection in national voting Sunday.

Hun Sen, who has effectively been in charge in Phnom Penh since the final days of President Reagan’s first term, is widely expected to use his next term to groom a new leader for Cambodia — his eldest son — while deepening economic and security ties with China, to the frustration of the U.S.

In the competition for influence between Beijing and Washington playing out across Southeast Asia, Hun Sen’s unassailable position has been a barrier for multiple U.S. administrations, analysts say.

“The U.S. has not been welcomed in any meaningful way by Cambodia for quite some time,” Arizona State University professor Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-born author on the Southeast Asian country, said in an interview. “The degree of joint military exercises with the U.S. pales in comparison to China.”

One candidate for the ruling party will attract outsized interest: Hun Manet, the 45-year-old, West Point-educated commander of the Royal Cambodian Army, who happens to be Hun Sen’s son. Since late 2021, Hun Manet has been unofficially considered prime minister in waiting after a vote of the leadership of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. He is running for a seat of his own on Sunday.

“Hun Manet is standing for election to the National Assembly in this month’s election and most likely will soon resign his commission in the military to take a seat in the Assembly,” Craig Etcheson, author of “Extraordinary Justice: Law, Politics, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals,” said in an interview. “The timing of his long-planned succession of his father as prime minister remains to be seen, but it could come soon after the election, as the new government is formed.”

The prime minister, just 70 years old despite nearly four decades in power, raised eyebrows this year when he seemed to go public with his dynastic hopes.

“Now we have found the young generation that will come to replace us,” he told a group of villagers, according to an Associated Press account. “We should better hand over [power] to them and just stay behind them.”

He has also signaled that the changing of the guard won’t happen before his expected next term ends in 2028.

Despite 18 parties nominally contesting the election, the prime minister is the prohibitive favorite because his regime and the government-friendly courts have neutered all major opposition parties, revoked media licenses, banned demonstrations, and limited free speech and other avenues of dissent.

In one sign of the government’s power, the National Assembly has unanimously enacted a law banning anyone who fails to vote from running for office in future elections. The measure was billed to promote civic responsibility, but critics call it a way to undercut opposition campaigns to boycott the vote.

The Cambodian People’s Party won all 125 parliamentary seats in 2018 and is expected to win them again. Election officials have resorted to the playbook they used in the last poll, effectively blocking the largest opposition from competing.

The National Election Committee and the Constitutional Council have ruled that the main opposition, the Candlelight Party, failed to submit specific documents in May and thus could not contest Sunday’s election. Last year, the Candlelight Party took more than 20% in local polls and focused on contesting all of Cambodia’s constituencies against Hun Sen in the national elections.

U.S. business leaders say Hun Manet, whose education includes a master’s degree in economics from New York University and a Ph.D. in economics from Britain’s University of Bristol, shows signs of being more open to foreign investment and foreign ideas than his father. Still, Cambodia’s best-known exiled opposition figure, Sam Rainsy, dismissed the election as a “joke” and said the regime’s “feudalistic” politics is a sign of Hun Sen’s fear of what would happen should he be forced out of office.

“For Hun Sen, power means impunity,” Sam Rainsy told the Reuters news agency in a May interview from Jakarta, Indonesia. “He knows when he loses power he will lose impunity. That is why he wants his son to replace him.”

A tilt toward China

Given the pressure from Washington over the government’s record on human rights and civil liberties, Hun Sen has shown a marked preference in recent years for China’s ready-to-deal silence about Phnom Penh’s internal affairs.

Cambodia’s economy remains deeply entwined with Chinese entrepreneurs. Some commercial relationships date back centuries.

“China will benefit [after the elections], as China has invested heavily in the continuing rule of Hun Sen, his son and the regime,” Sophal Ear said. “Militarily, you have [Cambodia’s] Ream Naval Base, now capable of hosting any warship in the [Chinese] navy, up to and including an aircraft carrier.”

The Beijing-financed base enables Chinese and other international ships to dock along southern Cambodia’s Gulf of Thailand, which opens to the South China Sea — a maritime domain fiercely contested by Beijing and Washington.

Commercial ties also give China leverage with Hun Sen’s regime.

“For more than a decade, China has been Cambodia’s largest source of foreign direct investment and development aid,” Mr. Etcheson said. “China is also by far the largest source of Cambodia’s economic imports.

“Compared to China, U.S. involvement in Cambodia’s political, economic and military affairs is relatively weak,” he added. “However, the U.S. is far and away the largest destination for Cambodian exports, so the U.S. relationship remains important to the country.”

The emergence of Hun Manet as heir apparent has injected a rare note of intrigue into Sunday’s vote, though many expect Hun Sen to continue to dominate Cambodia even if his son becomes prime minister.

“Hun Sen’s goal is to create a new dynasty, so he will want to ensure that his son has full control of the levers of power,” Richard Garella, a managing editor of The Cambodia Daily newspaper in the 1990s and a U.S.-funded International Republican Institute consultant in Cambodia in 2003, said in an interview.

“That means the son may begin as a puppet prime minister while the father continues to run the show,” Mr. Garella said. “How close the pieces are to being in place can’t be known outside the regime’s inner circle.

“If Hun Manet succeeds his father as prime minister, I would expect Hun Sen to remain as the [first among equals] of the Cambodia People’s Party, serving as president of the party. He would likely continue to control policy for some time to come,” Mr. Etcheson said.

Hun Sen and his supporters do not appear enamored with democracy. They stress the need for security, stability and peace after Cambodian trauma during the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

“The older generation understand and appreciate the banners that say, ‘Thank you, peace,’ as meaning, ‘Thank you, Hun Sen, for the peace you gave us,” Sophal Ear said. “But they also understand that peace means taking away democracy, human rights and freedom. They know that development means you build a road and steal my land.”

Hun Sen has indicated that he plans to keep his heir on a short leash as he clears his way to power. He told The Phnom Penh Post recently, “If my son fails to meet expectations … I would reassume my role as prime minister.”

Asked whether his son might take the country in a different direction, Hun Sen reportedly laughed and replied, “In what way? Any such divergence means disrupting peace and undoing the achievements of the older generation.”