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had some influence because they used the two-thirds majority; so I said, to hell with the
two-thirds majority.” The amendment duly passed, and the CPP no longer had any need
for a coalition partner. Funcinpec and its leader were suddenly surplus to requirements.
The purge began immediately. Hun Sen fired Funcinpec's co-interior and co-defense
ministers, giving the portfolios solely to his own men. Ranariddh responded by resigning
his post as National Assembly president, supposedly to concentrate on party matters, and
retreating to the lecture halls of Aix. The CPP-Funcinpec coalition, a partnership only
ever held together by threats and inducements, had finally collapsed. Along with it went
the remainder of the royalists' unity. Rainsy's amendment had spelled the end for Noro-
dom Ranariddh; it also allowed Hun Sen to sweep away the last pretenses of power-shar-
ing.
Funcinpec collapsed into in-fighting. The prince's dwindling camp faced off against a
faction of CPP accommodationists led by Nhek Bun Chhay, whom Hun Sen had rewar-
ded with an appointment as deputy prime minister. The two sides traded accusations of
treachery and vied for control of the party. Hun Sen, professing to be incensed that Ranar-
iddh's mistress, a former royal ballet dancer, had used her influence to get friends and
family into lucrative posts, called for Ranariddh's removal and said he would only work
with Bun Chhay's wing of the party. In a speech he warned recalcitrant royalists to “pre-
pare their coffins.”
4
In October 2006, Funcinpec's leadership voted to remove Ranariddh as president and
replace him with Keo Puth Reasmey, Cambodia's ambassador to Germany and the hus-
band of Sihanouk's youngest daughter. Bun Chhay's bodyguards stormed Ta Prohm,
the remaining pro-Ranariddh radio station, which fearfully adopted a CPP-friendly line.
Ranariddh, who had spent most of the year overseas, announced the formation of his own
Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP), but his political comeback swiftly ground to a halt in
the courts. By year's end he faced one lawsuit from his ex-wife, accusing him of adul-
tery—now outlawed under a new monogamy law tailor-made for Ranariddh—and anoth-
er from his old party comrades, who accused him of embezzling some $3.6 million from
the sale of the party's former headquarters. In March 2007, from his self-exile in Malay-
sia, Ranariddh watched as a court found him guilty of the embezzlement charge and sen-
tenced him to 18 months' jail. It was a virtual rerun of Rainsy's exile and conviction in
2005-06. Only the charges differed.
The royalist movement limped in several pieces toward the national election scheduled
for mid-2008. With Funcinpec in decline, Rainsy grew bullish about his own prospects
of challenging Hun Sen. “In 2008 there will be only two major parties competing against
each other,” he predicted, “the CPP and SRP—and I put them in that order out of po-
since 1993. The parties staged colorful processions through Phnom Penh and the pro-
