BANGKOK, Thailand — The result is hardly in doubt, but there still could still be some big changes on the horizon as Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, cruises to an expected reelection in Sunday’s national voting.
But 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 new 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 proven a barrier for multiple 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 also 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 and is running for a seat of his own in Sunday’s poll.
“Hun Manet is standing for election to the National Assembly [Parliament] 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, recent 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, still only 70 despite nearly four decades in power, raised eyebrows earlier 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.”
But he has also signaled 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 in Sunday’s vote because his regime and the government-friendly courts have neutered all significant opposition parties, revoked media licenses, banned demonstrations, and limited free speech and other avenues of dissent.
Just one sign of the government’s power: The National Assembly recently unanimously passed a law banning anyone who fails to vote from running for office in future elections. It was billed as a measure to promote civic responsibility, but critics call it a way to undercut opposition campaigns to boycott Sunday’s vote as a protest measure.
The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won all 125 parliament seats in 2018, and he is expected to win them all again. Election officials have resorted to the same playbook they used in the last poll — effectively blocking the single largest opposition from competing.
The National Election Committee and the Constitutional Council have already 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 was focusing 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, but 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 happens 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 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, in commercial relationships that in some cases 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 being fiercely contested by Beijing and Washington.
China’s commercial ties also give it leverage with the 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 Maret, Hun Sen’s eldest son, as heir apparent has injected a rare note of intrigue into Sunday’s vote, though many expect the father 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, former managing editor of The Cambodia Daily newspaper in the 1990s, and a U.S.-funded International Republican Institute consultant in Cambodia during 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.”
Said Mr. Etcheson, “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, stressing the need for security, stability and peace after the traumatic past Cambodians and the country suffered 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 already indicated that he plans to keep his heir on a short leash, even as he clears his way to power, telling The Phnom Penh Post recently, “If my son fails to meet expectations. … I would reassume my role as prime minister.”
And asked if his son might take the country in a different direction, the father reportedly laughed and replied, “In what way? Any such divergence means disrupting peace and undoing the achievements of the older generation.”