Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
geted this new urban population with promises of better wages and pensions for elderly
relatives, which they then took back to their home villages.
Voters also had greater access to information than ever before. The proliferation of in-
ternet access and social media networks like Facebook challenged the CPP's control of
the political narrative and facilitated the spread of critical information. As horizons ex-
panded beyond the scope of the village, there was a greater sense that local issues—land-
grabs, deforestation, corruption—were part of a larger system, one that had created
massive amounts of wealth yet largely ignored the needs of ordinary people. On election
day thousands of soldiers, civil servants, and CPP personnel defied their bosses and
secretly cast ballots for the opposition. Fewer people at demonstrations carried portraits
of Hun Sen, calling for his kingly intercession in local disputes. More people criticized
him. More people were connecting the dots.
Over his three decades in power, Hun Sen had pursued development in a highly select-
ive manner. Like Sihanouk, he succeeded in bringing Cambodia into the modern world,
but did so via the old methods: hierarchy, patronage, and the dictates of absolute power.
For a long time it worked. In 1979 the CPP inherited a scarred and traumatized nation,
and Hun Sen and his colleagues were able to draw on a vast reservoir of fear and craving
for security. But Hun Sen's status quo relied on the assumption that as Cambodia mod-
ernized its people would remain the same—essentially passive and “Khmer,” haunted and
immune to the modern world. By 2013, the contradiction had stretched his political con-
sensus to breaking point.
Hun Sen clearly sensed that things were changing, but responded in the only way he
knew how: with more threats and more handouts. In 2012 he launched a land-titling drive
to neutralize concern over land seizures. In the first half of 2013, he presided over the in-
auguration of 22 Buddhist pagodas, many located in key “swing districts” where the party
had leaked support at the previous year's commune polls. Addressing audiences of rural
folk, he warned that the benefits of CPP rule—its infrastructure projects and patronage of
religious institutions—would come to an end if he lost the election. Again and again he
warned of “internal war” if the opposition came to power.
The CPP also made tin-eared attempts to woo younger voters. This consisted in the
main of paying students—the going rate was 20,000 riels (about $5) per day—to drive
through the streets of the major towns waving flags and blaring progovernment techno
music. The sons of party grandees—like Hun Sen's youngest son, Hun Many, his son-in-
law Dy Vichea, and Sok Sokan, one of the sons of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An—were
run as candidates in a bid to boost its youth “appeal.” Before the election the party re-
leased a slick campaign video featuring karaoke star Nop Panharith, who crooned homil-
ies to Hun Sen's “iron-fisted” leadership as Angkor Wat loomed inevitably and youth act-
ivists formed a giant number “4”—the CPP's ballot number—on the roof of the Canadia
