Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Commanders aligned with the Chea Sim-Sar Kheng faction of the CPP had refused to
take part in the fight against the royalists, forcing Hun Sen to rely on his private body-
guard unit, the French-trained
gendarmerie
(military police), Khmer Rouge defectors,
counts. Those who had supported Hun Sen in his hour of need were rewarded with pro-
motions and riches; those who had refused sooner or later had their barrels tied.
Huy Piseth, the head of Hun Sen's bodyguard unit, and his deputy, Hing Bun Heang,
rose magically through the ranks. The top echelons of RCAF were stacked with Hun Sen
loyalists. Chap Pheakedei, the commander of RCAF Brigade 911, which had carried out
the violent interrogation of captured Funcinpecists, got his general's stars and won a spot
gendarmerie
(under Sao Sokha) and the national police (under Hok Lundy)—an axis of
top CPP official was that “no one can challenge Hun Sen. The only way to keep Hun Sen
down is for those inside the party to soften him up from within.”
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Funcinpec, meanwhile, wasn't faring well. The party had polled surprisingly well in
1998, but its perennial problems soon resurfaced. Sihanouk's legacy was further leeched
of political capital as royalist officials resumed feathering their nests. Unlike Hun Sen,
who made frequent excursions to the countryside, Ranariddh and his officials only rarely
left town, neglecting the party's rural support base. Without firm leadership, the old con-
cerns of income and prestige returned to the fore. Senior officials complained about the
loss of high-ranking posts. Reports of rampant corruption, including the auctioning-off of
cinpec stand for? Nobody had a convincing answer.
Left outside the tent was Sam Rainsy, who settled back into the well-worn role of agent
provocateur. Rainsy's eponymous party now held 14 parliamentary seats and many out-
side observers considered him to be Cambodia's best democratic hope. It was an impres-
sion Rainsy was careful to cultivate. After setting up his own party in 1995, Rainsy had
focused his lobbying efforts on Western donor governments. Foreign envoys remembered
him as a constant and irritating presence at diplomatic cocktail parties, where he button-
holed diplomats and tried to enlist them in his crusade. Rainsy had cleverly tapped into
the post-Cold War zeitgeist, with its hopes for a “new world order” based on democratic
principles and liberal norms, and he spoke its language well. For Australian Ambassador
Tony Kevin, Rainsy “was always feeding off the international enthusiasm for the things
that he espoused … It gave him the opportunity to cast a much longer shadow in Cam-
bodia than he would have otherwise been able to cast.”
Rainsy drew his strongest support from the US, where the presence of politically sali-
ent Cambodian diaspora communities made Hun Sen-bashing a profitable sport for Con-
