Prime Minister Hun Sen said Saturday that chaos would consume the country if he died, because it would take the government a long time to go through the process of replacing him.
“The government would have a crisis,” he said during a trip to Kompong Cham province to distribute flood aid.
“Then there would be no one to save the people, and the people would be miserable,” the prime minister said.
Hun Sen made his comments after announcing that although he will postpone his trip to Laos in a few weeks because of the flooding, he would not be able to travel every area in the country affected by the floods.
He said he would send representatives instead.
“People said I have a lot of bodyguards, and wherever I go, there will be a big movement of bodyguards,” Hun Sen said. “But if I have no defense, then something will happen.
“The Constitution states that if a prime minister dies, another prime minister cannot just be picked to replace him,” he said.
The Constitution stipulates that if the prime minister post is vacant, the Council of Ministers would have to be dissolved and another one would have to be formed, Hun Sen said.
“So if a prime minister dies, then the deputy prime minister, secretaries of state, undersecretaries of state and everyone else would be dissolved,” Hun Sen said.
A replacement prime minister would have to be nominated, and then receive approval from the King and receive a two-thirds vote by the National Assembly, he said.
In Pursat province Saturday, Hun Sen suggested that an attempt on his life is not far-fetched, noting that a 1998 Siem Reap rocket attack was thought to have targeted him, but he escaped.
The Cambodian government has been trying to extradite Sam Rainsy Party activist Sok Yoeun, who is accused of orchestrating the attack.
He has been detained in a Bangkok jail for the last seven months for illegally entering Thailand.
He faces his second extradition hearing at the end of this month. Opposition party members say Sok Yoeun is being targeted for political reasons.
Hun Sen said he has visited 10 areas of the country to see victims of the worst flooding in recent Cambodian history, and he will visit 10 more.
He said a scheduled surgery for his wife, Bun Rany, had been canceled so she could help flood victims. Bun Rany is the head of the Cambodian Red Cross.
(Additional reporting by Ham Samnang)
