The Peasant King - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 122

the 400-meter running track. A well-rehearsed crowd held up colored cards that formed
swooping doves of peace and the words prampi makara —“January 7.” The old party
troika of Hun Sen, Chea Sim, and Heng Samrin marked their three-decade dominance of
Cambodian politics by cruising the arena in a black Mercedes convertible to the blare of
triumphant anthems and a pattering of unspontaneous applause. As always, Victory over
Genocide Day brought out its share of detractors who claimed that the fall of Pol Pot
wasn't a liberation at all, but rather an occupation by the Vietnamese. Hun Sen wasn't
having any of it; those questioning the legitimacy of January 7, he said in a speech, were
“animals” and apologists for Pol Pot. 25
For Hun Sen, the continuing presence of an opposition, however marginalized, re-
mained an affront. Like past Cambodian leaders, his worldview had little place for polit-
ical opponents or “international standards.” The national interest was identified exclus-
ively with his own party's myths and patrimonial systems of control. In this scheme there
was no middle way. Anyone outside the official consensus was considered an unpatriotic
wrecker or stooge of foreign interests; any institution not harmonized with the CPP and
its founding myths posed threats to a hard-won peace. Hun Sen's control would only be
secure when it managed to subsume and neutralize all alternative sources of power. 26
A mirage of pluralism still remained. Human rights monitors working for groups like
ADHOC and LICADHO continued churning out reports bravely outlining the violation
of local laws and UN human rights conventions, but it seemed to make little difference.
Hun Sen's system was specifically engineered to absorb criticism. The critics were now a
harmless part of the scenery, as politically inert as rice paddies or sugar palms.
Sam Rainsy and his party tacked between narrowing political horizons. After the CPP's
resounding victory in the 2008 election, lawmakers from the SRP and what was left of
Funcinpec were again lured with cash bribes and posts in government. Anchored by the
Peasant King and the mythology of January 7, the CPP presented itself to defectors as a
big tent in which officials from every party were welcome—so long as they accepted Hun
Sen's primacy and divested themselves of old political ambitions. In mid-2009 Rainsy's
party produced a recorded telephone conversation in which a CPP commune councillor
offered an SRP counterpart “$700 or $800” cash in exchange for voting against his own
party in district elections. 27 The party claimed it was just one of dozens—maybe even
hundreds—of similar incidents.
Those who refused to be “harmonized” faced the courts. As violence receded in Cam-
bodian politics, government critics were subjected to “lawfare,” in which accusations of
defamation or incitement were leveled by powerful people and then rubber-stamped by
pliant judges. Throughout 2009, journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition fig-
ures were slapped with lawsuits and hauled into court. One of those was Mu Sochua, the
most prominent woman in the SRP, and one of its most charismatic parliamentarians. As