Longtime Cambodian leader Hun Sen to step aside to let son rule

BANGKOK, Thailand | Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who won reelection just last week, announced on Wednesday he would install his West Point-trained son next month as the country’s leader and resign after monopolizing politics, jailing rivals and silencing free speech during his nearly four decades in power.

The authoritarian leader had long been grooming his son for the top job, and argued that it was better to step aside sooner rather than later.

“If I continue to be prime minister for one or two years, and then resign from the position, the situation will become unstable,” Hun Sen said in a televised address, setting Aug. 22 as the day he would step down. “So it is necessary to have a new cabinet, most of whom are young people responding to their duty for the future.”

His long-time colleagues, including Defense Minister Tea Banh, Interior Minister Sar Kheng, National Assembly President Heng Samrin, and Minister of National Assembly Men Sam On, are slated to also resign. Many younger lawmakers from the ruling party are expected to join Hun Manet’s new administration.

The transfer of prime ministerial power to his son is scheduled when the newly elected National Assembly, which opens on Aug. 21, receives the National Election Commission’s confirmation of his father’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP) landslide. With the leading opposition party blocked from running on a technicality, the CPP claimed 120 of the National Assembly’s 125 seats in the July 23 national elections.

Both the Biden administration and the European Union issued statements criticizing Sunday’s vote. The State Department announced curbs on aid and development assistance for Phnom Penh.

Hun Manet, the 45-year-old head of the nation’s military, was a victorious first-time candidate to the National Assembly, representing the CPP in the capital Phnom Penh.

Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving ruling since effectively taking power 38 years ago, is not fading away, saying he will take over as president of the Senate and remain president of the CPP. The legislative role may enable him to keep his diplomatic immunity against years of alleged human rights abuses and other authoritarian political tactics.

“I still have the possibility to continue to serve people, and help the government manage security and public order,” the departing prime minister told reporters last week.

Saluting Cambodia’s close links with China, his son’s first trip as prime minister is expected to be to China’s Belt and Road summit in October. With the Biden administration and private rights groups criticizing the state of democracy and civil liberties in Phnom Penh, Cambodia is expected to move closer to China in the superpower rivalry for friends, influence and markets in Southeast Asia.

Hun Manet has sounded vaguely optimistic that there is room for improvement in U.S.-Cambodian relations.

“Any improvement in relations depends in large part on whether Western governments are willing to accept a less democratic baseline for Cambodia,” he said just before last week’s vote, according to Bloomberg.

King Norodom Sihamoni met him on Wednesday to discuss the transition of power.

The son and the father are widely expected to expand Cambodia’s extensive diplomatic, economic, and military ties with Beijing.

“China has prized the political stability that Hun Sen has overseen in Cambodia, so the PRC is likely at least a bit nervous about a handover of power to an untested successor,” veteran Cambodia watcher Craig Etcheson said in an interview. “The PRC has deep ties to Cambodia’s social, political, economic, and military elites, so they have a firm basis upon which to move forward under a new Cambodian leader.”

The dynastic transfer of power is unlikely to improve relations with the U.S., he added. Washington “is likely to recoil at a general hand-off of political power from father to son, and it may bode ill for U.S.-Cambodian relations, at least in the short term, until Manet reaches the point in his tenure when he can begin shaping policy on his own.”

Unlike his father, however, Hun Manet has strong personal and professional ties to the U.S. and the West: He is Cambodia’s first West Point graduate and earned postgraduate degrees in the U.S. and Britain.

Returning home, Hun Manet became commander of the Royal Cambodian Army commander, the deputy commander of his father’s bodyguards and head of Cambodia’s counterterrorism unit.

His background gives some hope that Hun Manet may not follow exactly in his father’s footsteps, Arizona State University professor Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-born author, said in an interview.

 “The U.S. is hoping the son will take the country in a different direction,” he said. But “Cambodia’s political culture makes it very hard that change would happen this way. Too much is at stake.”