Why Asia’s Longest-Serving Leader Is Warning About a Coup
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On his path to becoming Asia’s longest-serving leader, Hun Sen has mastered the art of fighting for power.
When he first took charge of Cambodia as a 33-year-old in 1985, he battled remnants of the Khmer Rouge for control of the Southeast Asian nation. After losing the first election following a United Nations-brokered peace in 1993, he threatened to secede unless he was made co-prime minister. Four years later, a de facto coup put him solely in charge, a position he’s kept to this day.
Now 67, Hun Sen is suddenly worried that a group of exiled dissidents might overthrow him by force -- a claim that looks hysterical on its face given many of his main political opponents have been locked up or abroad since he won all of the country’s parliamentary seats during a boycotted election last year.
But he has lots of reason to worry.
Discontent is building among the country’s 16 million people -- most of whom have never been alive under another leader -- over skyrocketing household debt, resentment at an influx of Chinese investment and a lack of jobs. The European Union is threatening to pull preferential tariffs that could upend the garment sector, the economy’s most important industry. And questions over succession are spurring rumors of internal rifts in his ruling Cambodian People’s Party.
“There could easily be a popular uprising,” said Ou Virak, director of Phnom Penh-based think-tank Future Forum and former chairman of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.