Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In Prey Veng, the mid-morning sun beat down. After Hun Sen was gone, lifted back to a
vast and distant realm, the stage was dismantled and the crowds began to disperse. A few
villagers hung around, lounging in the shade on motorbikes. It was hard to know what
most thought of Hun Sen's fabulism. Few dared to openly criticize the prime minister,
but the praise for his achievements often sounded hollow and formulaic. Some people
who were denied entrance to Hun Sen's speech joked among themselves about the self-
importance of the whole affair—from the party officials with identification badges to the
stern police who refused to let them pass. When Cambodia held commune elections in
June 2012, many people in Prey Veng voted against the CPP, which explained Hun Sen's
helicopter visit—one of five pagoda-opening excursions he made to Prey Veng in the first
half of 2013. “They can't say they hate Hun Sen,” said Sa Teun, an activist for the newly
formed CNRP who was blocked from attending the prime minister's speech. “The mouth
and the heart are different.”
Ninety minutes away by road, the provincial capital of Prey Veng slumbered in the
midday heat. Its red roofs crouched amid the tamarind trees and coconut palms. Its broad
cracked streets were untroubled by traffic. At Wat Sang Semei, a young Buddhist monk
reflected on the political situation in his province. While more people were voting against
the CPP, the basic calculation for most rural Cambodians, especially the older gener-
ations, remained much the same. “People are afraid to speak of politics in Cambod-
ia—even monks,” said 32-year-old Chan Sothea. “We are so poor we don't talk a lot
about politics. We don't have any money so we just think with our stomachs. It's a big
problem in this country.”
For most Cambodians, this is nothing new. Politics has traditionally been the business
of powerful people in distant places, far beyond the orbit of agricultural life. Hun Sen's
political success stems from the fact that he has dealt with Cambodia as it actually ex-
ists—as a poor, overwhelmingly rural society, haunted by the past, used to living within
the margins of basic subsistence. People are genuinely grateful for the schools and roads
and pagodas that the CPP brings them, but the party has discouraged them from demand-
ing anything more substantial. The CPP's rule has emphasized those elements of Khmer
culture that prize security, dependency, and deference to the powerful—a mentality best
summed up in the imperative
doch ke doch aeng
—“do like others do.”
To a great extent Hun Sen's political strategy since the early 1990s has been a success.
For most rural Cambodians politics remains a case, to paraphrase the German playwright
Bertolt Brecht, of “rice first, then democracy.” But for all their seeming strength, Hun Sen
and his system were rent by contradictions. Despite surviving repeated cycles of Cam-
bodian history, and presiding over an unprecedented era of peace and economic growth,
Hun Sen's intellectual framework was still built around the imperatives of survival. In 30
