Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and other senior officials. The party patronage machine was well oiled. In the run-up to
an election, tycoons and government officials would make compulsory donations to party
“working groups” at each level of government, which sponsored development projects
and coordinated campaigns. Meanwhile, individual officials were assigned responsibility
for delivering the vote in certain provinces, districts, and communes. Ministers sponsored
schools. Generals paid for wells. The fact that infrastructure projects were often built with
international aid money was generally irrelevant. If Hun Sen cut the ribbon on a project,
it became a “Hun Sen project.” When an agency like the World Food Programme donated
rice, village and commune officials presented it as a gift from the party.
The CPP's vote-harvesting scheme was anchored by the person of the prime minister,
now a dominant presence in the media. Like Sihanouk, Hun Sen ruled from the rostrum,
using school graduation ceremonies and rural ribbon-cuttings to manipulate the chess-
board of Cambodian politics. Hun Sen's speeches were a masterful brew of strongman
posturing and frothed-up populist appeal. Unlike many of his foreign-educated oppon-
ents, he spoke in a language ordinary people could understand. Audiences of rice farmers
would chuckle and laugh as he joked, or jibed, or summoned up the spirits to curse his
enemies. He might quote the old Khmer proverb about the ants and the fish, which de-
vour one another when the water levels rise and fall. Or he might mention the “necktie
fortune-tellers” who came from abroad, lectured Cambodians about democracy, and then
disappeared again.
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Watching Hun Sen work the crowd on a trip in Siem Reap, Ambassador Ray was re-
minded of a Chicago ward politician making his rounds: “He would take his shoes off,
roll his pants legs up and wade out into a rice paddy with the farmers and sit in their huts
with them … He was at ease in crowds.” The whole exercise—from god-like helicopter
descent to the distribution of gifts—drew heavily on Sihanouk's modus operandi. The
main difference was that Sihanouk had inspired genuine devotion in his “children.” Hun
Sen's visits were more staged. And they were always accompanied by a hint of menace.
When asked about his political philosophy, Hun Sen once said that it was to “know
him to exploit them to great political effect. The CPP's campaigns teased out the in-
stinctual conservatism of a population traumatized and worn out by decades of conflict.
Constant references to Pol Pot kept people in fear, grateful for the peace, stability, and
basic development brought by the CPP's rule. Hun Sen reminded people not to take these
things for granted. The country was only ever a whisker away from chaos. Only a vote for
the CPP, delivered loyally at each election, could protect the country from again slipping
into the abyss.
With memories of war still fresh, it was a winning strategy. The CPP dominated the
2002 commune poll, winning 68.4 percent of the seats and retaining all but a handful of
