Following a flurry of slights against the retired King’s pen pal, Prime Minister Hun Sen toned down his attacks on Ruom Ritt on Thursday, saying he is now satisfied Ruom Ritt has stopped writing.
Retired King Norodom Sihanouk announced earlier this week that Ruom Ritt—an ardent critic of the Hun Sen, whom many speculate is the former King himself—was too ill to write anymore, shortly after Hun Sen suggested in a speech that Ruom Ritt would be better off dead.
But the prime minister warned Thursday that the public sparring between the two is not yet over.
“If he talks, we will respond,” Hun Sen said during an inauguration ceremony at the Samrong Andet pagoda in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district.
“For some Cambodians, if we do not step on their heels, they won’t learn a lesson,” he said.
Hun Sen said he was frustrated by a group of people, alluding to Ruom Ritt, Norodom Sihanouk’s nephew Prince Sisowath Thomico and the retired King’s official biographer, Julio Jeldres—all of whom have recently written texts critical of the Hun Sen-led government.
“I use only one hand to build the country, but I have to spare the other hand to fight the crazy group,” he said.
Hun Sen over the past week has been increasingly critical of Ruom Ritt.
He has also criticized Norodom Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime of the 1960s.
