When Cambodia’s new prime minister Hun Manet visits Melbourne next week for the ASEAN Australia Summit, he may seem a welcome change from his long-serving authoritarian father Hun Sen. But hopes for a democratic and human rights renaissance in this genocide-ravaged and long sadly misgoverned country remain unhappily misplaced.

While Hun Manet – softly spoken, Western-educated and technocratically savvy – will present himself as the face to the world of a modern, developing Cambodia, talking the talk of economic reform and more effective governance, the talk of his father back home is jail for his critics. And it is his father who continues to call all the shots that matter.

Hun Sen, still only 71, remains president of the Cambodian People’s Party, and in practical control of what effectively remains a one-party state. And he is, for good measure, de facto constitutional head of state as well: as president of the Senate, he acts for King Sihamoni whenever he is out of the state – as the King often has been, not least when controversial legislation has been signed into force.

In full: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/we-re-welcoming-a-reformer-pm-but-it-s-his-despot-dad-who-calls-the-shots-20240301-p5f94c.html

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet’s visit to Malaysia on 27 February is part of a larger strategic overture, including his visit to Vietnam late last year in the months following his new leadership.

With the new dilemma and trap of regional power play and the ties with Beijing and Washington, Manet seeks to chart a new path of long term assurance for Cambodia, against the backdrop of the perspective of Phnom Penh being the satellite player of Beijing.

The visits to Vietnam and now to Malaysia are geared to strengthen joint security and defence, especially in the context of building and strengthening neighbourly trust and continental solidarity.

In full: https://www.eurasiareview.com/27022024-cambodias-perpetual-beijing-trap-and-manets-tricky-pipe-dream-analysis/

In April, Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen will end his eight-month sabbatical. After resigning from his position as prime minister last year, after almost four decades in the job, to make way for his eldest son, he will return to frontline politics as the new president of the Senate. His ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won 55 of the 58 available seats in the Senate at Sunday’s elections.

Cambodia’s opposition movement could do with a sabbatical, too. The Candlelight Party, the only opposition party to control commune council positions, wasn’t allowed to stand in the Senate elections, just as it wasn’t at last year’s general elections, over a trumped-up issue of paperwork, a problem that isn’t about to go away. In October, it formed an alliance with three other parties, one of which, the Khmer Will Party, probably won three Senate seats. But the CPP – or, rather, the Hun family – now have such a stranglehold over every political and social institution in Cambodia that this might be the point to say that opposition politics, as it currently exists, is dead and there is no use in lurching onward, grasping at every failure in the belief that it’s actually a sign of possibility.

In full: https://thediplomat.com/2024/02/cambodias-opposition-needs-to-take-a-sabbatical/

The responses to my article “US Sanctions and Rallying Around the Flag in North Korea and Cambodia,” published in The Diplomat on February 16 merit further elaboration.

The article was the result of a discussion between myself and the U.S. economist Steve Hanke over whether there should be any exceptions to his blanket position of opposing U.S. sanctions against foreign countries.

A spokesman for Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, Chum Sounry, wrote to The Diplomat, supporting Hanke’s stance on sanctions, but objecting to my classification of Cambodia alongside North Korea.

In full: https://thediplomat.com/2024/02/the-hereditary-dictatorships-of-north-korea-cambodia-have-shared-soviet-roots/