The Peasant King - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 124

countryside, where the CPP's machinery of patronage hummed as efficiently as ever. A
public opinion survey conducted by the International Republican Institute in mid-2009
showed that despite high levels of corruption, 79 percent of Cambodians felt their country
was headed in the “right direction.” More than three-quarters of these respondents put
this down to the building of new roads; 61 percent cited the opening of schools. One
IRI official told me that despite winning the SRP international attention, legal battles had
“steered the party way off message.” “They talk about party leaders being persecuted on
the basis of esoteric rights that many Cambodian people have very little ownership of,”
the official said. “They've adapted to appeal to outside constituencies rather than Cam-
bodian voters.”
But still the party forged on. Mu Sochua campaigned tirelessly through the villages of
Kampot. The party bolstered its youth wing and began merger talks with Kem Sokha's
HRP, hoping to establish a unified opposition front in time for the 2013 election. In
July 2012, the two parties came together to form the Cambodia National Rescue Party
(CNRP), whose name cleverly echoed the Khmer phrase sangkruos cheat (“national res-
cue” or “salvation”) contained in the name of the Front that helped topple Pol Pot in 1979.
Despite remaining in self-exile abroad, Rainsy stayed upbeat about his prospects, ar-
guing that demographic changes would create an inevitable groundswell of support for
his party. As he told me by phone from Paris in late 2009:
In a typical family, you have the grandfather, who votes for Funcinpec; you have the father, who
votes for the CPP; and you have the children, who when they reach voting age will vote for the
SRP … It will take less time than one might imagine now, because of the progress of technology,
information, communication, and education.
To Rainsy, the pattern was obvious: “History is accelerating.” But could anybody say
which way it was moving?
On October 15, 2012, just two weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday, Norodom Sihanouk
died of a heart attack in Beijing. The last message posted on his website was a short typed
missive under the heading “How Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia Employs His Time,”
in which the ailing monarch listed the routine of injections, examinations, and Chinese
herbal treatments that took up much of the last years of his life. Amid the rota of doc-
tors' visits, he also found time to post scans of several pages of his unpublished mem-
oir, Le Calice jusqu'à la lie (“The Cup to the Dregs”), covered with feisty underlinings
and annotations. 28 Right to the end, Sihanouk was actively engaged in shaping his legacy,
smoothing the edges of a storied and controversial career.
The country was stunned by his death. Hun Sen immediately flew to Beijing, where he
tearfully embraced members of the royal family and knelt down in front of Sihanouk's