Notes - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 278

5. Vong Sokheng and Charles McDermid, “Troubled Funcinpec on the Ropes,” Phnom Penh
Post , March 24-April 6, 2006.
6. Cat Barton and Vong Sokheng, “Ranariddh Quits Politics,” Phnom Penh Post , October 3,
2008.
7. Lor Chandara and Richard Sine, “Hun Sen Credits Cambodians for 1991 Peace,” Cambodia
Daily , October 23, 2001.
8. “Samdech Techo Hun Sen: On the Issue of Responsibility As a Leader and Compassion As a
Human Being with a Golden Heart,” Council of Ministers Press and Quick Reaction Unit,
October 8, 2012.
9. These are the latest statistics available from Hun Sen's cabinet. See http://cnv.org.kh/en/
?page_id=125 (accessed Mar. 2014).
10. “A School in Mali Named after PM Hun Sen,” Agence Kampuchea Presse, March 21, 2013.
11. The rules for gaining oknha status are laid down in a 1993 subdecree. See Kheang Un, “Pat-
ronage Politics and Hybrid Democracy: Political Change in Cambodia, 1993-2003,” Asian
Perspective 29, no. 2 (2005): 203-30, at 225.
12. Regarding the historical role of the oknha , see David P. Chandler, A History of Cambodia
(Boulder: Westview, 2008), 130-6.
13. Chea Sotheacheath, “From Strongman to Songman: Hun Sen Pens the Blues,” Phnom Penh
Post , January 30-February 12, 1998; Seth Mydans, “When He Writes a Song, Cambodia Bet-
ter Listen,” New York Times , July 15, 1998. For more on Hun Sen's musical “career,” see
“Hun Sen Shares His Music in Effort to Preserve Tradition,” Cambodia Daily , January 10,
2000.
14. Julia Wallace, “Cambodian Strongman and Karaoke King,” New York Times , January 18,
2013.
15. Adhémard Leclère, Histoire du Cambodge (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1914), 238-78; translated
and cited by Astrid Norén-Nilsson, “Performance as (Re)Incarnation: The Sdech Kân Narrat-
ive,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (Feb. 2013): 4-23, at 11-12.
16. Harish C. Mehta and Julie B. Mehta, Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen (Singa-
pore: Marshall Cavendish, 2013), 64.
17. “Selected Comments at the Visit to the Former Palace of Sanlob Prey Nokor in the District of
Ponnhea Krek, Kampong Cham Province,” Cambodia New Vision , February 26, 2006.
18. Ros Chantraboth, Preah Sdech Kân (Phnom Penh: Bânnakear Angkor, 2007); translated and
cited in Norén-Nilsson, “Performance as (Re)Incarnation,” 19.
19. See, for instance, “Selected Comments at the Inauguration of the Bayon TV and Radio Sta-
tion,” Cambodia New Vision , March 11, 2007.
20. According to Norén-Nilsson, the first statue of Sdech Kan was created in 2006. Others have
since appeared across the country, including a mounted statue of Kan in Kampong Cham
commissioned by a tycoon, Oknha Sim Vanna, on Hun Sen's orders. Sculptors have also been