As the purges began in the Khmer Rouge Eastern Zone, the young soldier Ai Khan fled to the Vietnamese border in 1977 and, subsequently, to a life in politics.
“Before that, I never thought I would [get into politics]. But the Khmer Rouge, the killing, it forced me to get involved in politics, to help lead the country,” said Ai Khan in a recent interview.
At the time, in the same beleaguered country, there was a 2-year-old boy who today has little direct memory of life under the Khmer Rouge.
Instead, as Chea Poch begins his first term in the National Assembly, he remembers growing up under the thumb of Vietnam’s occupying troops: Being forced to learn their language, to pay homage to their country.
This year Ai Khan and Chea Poch will be fellow parliamentarians. Among their many differences, the two men signify the age divide between the CPP and the opposition party.
Ai Khan, 47, entering his third mandate in parliament, will be among the CPP’s youngest representatives, but is still three years older than the average opposition parliamentarian. At 29, Chea Poch, a Sam Rainsy Party member, will be the youngest in the Assembly.
At the time of their election last year, the average age of a CPP parliamentarian was 57, while the average age of a Sam Rainsy Party member of parliament was 44. Ten of the 13 parliamentarians aged 40 and younger are from the Sam Rainsy Party. The remaining three are from Funcinpec. In contrast, the youngest CPP parliamentarian is 46-year-old Sieng Nam.
The divide reflects a number of distinctions between the parties, and points to a possible future in which the ruling party’s long-standing vanguard is faced with younger, better-educated and experienced opposition members in the National Assembly.
That young opposition core was quick to show its aggressiveness this month when Chea Poch—along with Sok Pheng, also 29, Chea Sochenda, 31, and Ngor Sovann, 33—launched a lawsuit against CPP Minister of Posts and Telecommunications So Khun and the director of Mobitel.
They allege that So Khun has accepted a $2,500 monthly salary from the telecommunications giant, unlawfully serving as a company adviser. Their lawsuit echoes a similar action taken by opposition parliamentarian Son Chhay in 2001, when he confronted So Khun over the same issue.
Sok Pheng, the first opposition parliamentarian ever elected out of Kompong Thom province, has been especially outspoken on issues that plague that area, including illegal logging and unchecked banditry.
“They will certainly bring some energy into the National Assembly,” said Lao Mong Hay, a political and social analyst with the Center for Social Development.
Most of the young parliamentarians are like Chea Poch—urban professionals with college degrees and a family in good standing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business and worked in the municipality’s tax office for seven years. Disenchanted with that work, he took a second job as a newspaper reporter.
His business-minded parents helped him acquire his position in the Sam Rainsy Party, he said. “Without the money, I cannot get involved in politics…. But I do business to get into politics—not like in other parties, where they get into politics to make their own business.”
In Prey Veng province, a traditional CPP stronghold, Chea Poch is petitioning the governor to lower electricity costs. When he talks about Cambodia’s future, he talks about emboldening the people, developing the economy and providing jobs for a blooming population.
Fresh thinking will be required to accommodate Cambodia’s post-Khmer Rouge generation, which already comprises half of the country’s population, he said.
“The old leaders have communist ideas stuck in their brains. It’s hard to change their brains to the new thinking. This new generation, they see what is new,” Chea Poch said.
Such brashness is what the CPP has avoided by encouraging its young members to mature and develop a power base before taking prominent positions, said party spokesman Khieu Kanharith.
“For young politicians it is important that they are mature. They must learn to be populist, to be responsible,” he said.
“First you have to gain support in your village, even if it is in Phnom Penh. If you are in the faculty, you must get the support of your classmates,” he said.
Ai Khan says the CPP brand of populism—building roads, bridges, schools and water projects—succeeded in winning his base of support in Koh Kong province.
“I have served the people a long time, from 1977,” he said.
Though he is one of the party’s youngest leaders, his background and education conform to that of the CPP’s elders. He fought with the Khmer Rouge, then defected.
In the 1980s, he studied political theory in Moscow and in Hanoi. He was deputy governor of Koh Kong from 1979 until 1993, when he joined parliament.
Now his political ambitions are tempered by patience, respect for the party’s senior leaders and a confidence in the CPP’s durability.
“When [the party’s elders] are retired, we still need them, and we need their advice…. Now I am young, but when the old people retire, the new generation will become the leaders. We will become their successors,” Ai Khan said.
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The former wave of youthful progressives, from both the Sam Rainsy Party and Funcinpec, is now fully mature, Lao Mong Hay said.
Royalist parliamentarian Princess Norodom Vacheara, party Secretary-General Prince Norodom Sirivudh and opposition MPs Keo Remy and Son Chhay have cemented leadership roles in their respective parties. The new young MPs should follow their lead, he said.
That includes 29-year-old Princess Rattana Devi, the Western-educated daughter of Prince Norodom Ranariddh who this year was elected parliamentarian for Kratie province.
Princess Rattana Devi, who is said to speak more comfortably in French than Khmer, will have to work hard to shake her aristocratic persona and identify with her demographic—young women who are mostly uneducated, poor and working, Lao Mong Hay said.
“If the young princess can follow in [Princess Vacheara and Prince Sirivudh’s] footsteps, she will be a good prospect as well,” he said.
“These young politicians can serve for two terms and then perhaps move into a minister spot, and they can still be very dynamic for another 15 years. It is a great future for them,” he said.
