A False Dawn - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 71

Sihanouk's initial strategy was to leverage his symbolic power to end the civil war and
bring about national reconciliation. In January 1994, he had suggested that Khmer Rouge
leaders like Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Nuon Chea should be given roles in government as
an incentive to end the fighting. 9 After the failure of the government's 1994 offensives,
Sihanouk summoned the American journalist Nate Thayer to Beijing and told him that if
things got worse, he might be obliged to step in, assume power, and help “put an end to
anarchy.” Sihanouk proposed heading a new government of national reconciliation that
would contain representatives from all four factions, including the Khmer Rouge. “How
can I avoid intervening in a few months' time or one year's time if the situation continues
to deteriorate?” he said. 10
Hun Sen and Ranariddh both opposed the plan. Hun Sen wrote an open letter to the
king arguing that the proposal was unconstitutional, and dismissed any idea that leading
Khmer Rouge should be brought into government. According to Hun Sen, the only solu-
tion to the Khmer Rouge lay on the battlefield. Letting Sihanouk take power would be “a
big blow to the achievement of the UN operation in Cambodia”—an act tantamount to a
“cool coup d'état.” 11
Sihanouk's response was characteristic; he sulked, withdrew his plan, and complained
that nobody appreciated him. “H.E. [His Excellency] Hun Sen and others want me to re-
main 'powerless.' I will no longer intervene in their affairs,” the monarch wrote, saying
he would instead stay in Beijing for cancer treatments. 12 The sudden withdrawal was vin-
tage Sihanouk. But unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, when his dramatic reversals only un-
derlined his indispensability, the old God-King found himself in a position of weakness.
The final repudiation of Sihanouk came in July, when the National Assembly voted to
outlaw the Khmer Rouge, spelling an end to the king's reconciliation bid. Later, Hun Sen
would resurrect Sihanouk's peace plan, amnesties and all, in his own bid to end the civil
war.
The episode was a vivid illustration of where the real power in Cambodia now lay.
Since his return in 1991, the CPP had managed to confine the king in a constitutional
straitjacket, restricting his room for political maneuver. “[Hun Sen's] letter is a warning to
the king,” one CPP official told Thayer. “The King must understand the message: 'Don't
go too far. Be happy with being king.'” 13 As time went by Sihanouk would spend more
and more time out of the country, watching Cambodian developments from an Olympian
remove. Shuttling between his residence in Siem Reap and his opulent homes in Beijing
and Pyongyang, the king retreated into more pleasurable diversions. In mid-1994 he put
the finishing touches to a new film, Peasants in Distress , a typically florid romance set
against the backdrop of the UNTAC mission. The king “may have lost touch with nation-
al politics,” one observer noted pithily, “but he still has an eye for the camera.” 14