Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
torate, and took a teaching position at a university in Aix-en-Provence. After Ranariddh
joined his father's service in 1983, he enjoyed a frictionless rise. Three years later he was
appointed commander of Funcinpec's armed force, the Armée Nationale Sihanoukienne,
despite his evident lack of military experience. Later, when Sihanouk resigned from Fun-
cinpec to head the Supreme National Council under UNTAC, Ranariddh added a third
string to his bow: party leader and democratic politician. Victory at the 1993 election, a
vote for father more than son, capped off his unlikely metamorphosis from law professor
to national leader.
Ranariddh had the patrician airs of most royals. He thrived on the diplomatic cocktail
circuit, and gave long, ebullient speeches at public functions. Next to Hun Sen, however,
Ranariddh was a political amateur. Hun Sen had learned politics the hard way. Decades
of civil war and struggle had made him a steely operator. In private meetings, diplomats
noted Hun Sen's attention to detail and clear sense of purpose. Ranariddh's cabinet, on
the other hand, was fashioned like a miniature royal court populated by returnee yes-men
who rarely questioned his views. One Western diplomat described the first time he called
on Ranariddh after his arrival in Cambodia in 1995: “He was nervous … he giggled a lot,
and he wasn't well briefed. He had two or three sycophantic note-takers who didn't take
a whole lot of notes but bowed and scraped every time he asked them a question. He was
very much the
petit prince
.”
To the extent that two mismatched leaders managed to forge a working relationship, it
involved the division of corrupt spoils. As in the 1980s, political power in the new king-
dom was counted out in currencies of loyalty and payola, a calculus that encouraged rent-
seeking at the top—where officials creamed off aid money and took kickbacks from busi-
ness deals—and at the grassroots, where poorly paid soldiers, police, and civil servants
had no choice but to supplement their meager incomes by demanding bribes. Funcinpec
officials, arriving late to the party, scrambled to enrich themselves. Within the party, gov-
ernment jobs were literally bought and sold.
In return for their jobs, officials of both parties paid a portion of their illicit earnings to
their bosses, a chain of graft that reached all the way up to the offices of the two co-prime
ministers. “Every business deal must have a cut for the relevant minister (or Prime Min-
ister) and every transaction involves a percentage for the relevant official in a situation
where most government ministries are barely working,” wrote Tony Kevin's predecessor,
John Holloway, in a confidential cable in June 1994. Public servants, paid an average of
$28 per month, were “only motivated to attend their offices at all by the possibility of
making some extra money.”
2
One of the most lucrative sources of income was logging. In June 1994, Hun Sen and
Ranariddh wrote to the Thai prime minister announcing that the Cambodian Ministry of
Defense had been granted the exclusive right to export timber—in large part to secure the
