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Expats traveling to Cambodia may want to know that Hun Sen doesn’t plan to vacate power any time soon…Pacific South Morning Journal ®



So what’s behind Cambodia's crackdown on the opposition?

Cambodia's supreme court disbanded the country's main opposition party on Thursday.

Hun Sen, 65, is one of the world's longest-serving leaders, first taking office as prime minister of Cambodia in 1985. Rights groups say hundreds of opposition figures, journalists, trade union leaders and others have been killed in politically motivated attacks during his time in power.

Hun Sen's dominance was challenged in parliamentary elections in 2013, when the newly formed Cambodia National Rescue Party nearly pulled off an upset. Since then, its leaders have either been jailed or pushed into exile.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court dissolved the party, accepting the government's claim that it conspired with foreigners to stage a revolution.

This effectively allows the ruling party to run uncontested in next year's polls.

So, will the court's ruling help consolidate Hun Sen's three-decade-long grip on power?

I think that within two years my assets will decrease, there won’t be a gain. And besides my salary I don’t have any other income. But I think my children will support me, they won’t let me starve.”

That was how Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen first replied when he asked by the anticorruption unit of Cambodia about his assets in 2011. He also claimed that he took home an annual salary of just US$13,800, and that it was his sole source of income.

On 7 July however, the anti-corruption activist group Global Witness published a report which revealed the colossal wealth of Hun Sen’s family, which could not have come from accumulating an annual salary of US$13,800 a year.

Hun Sen’s family members are alleged to be major stakeholders in several large international corporations such as Procter and Gamble, Apple, Nokia, Visa, Unilever, Durex and Honda with a total capital of more than US$200m. Their total assets are between US$500 million and US$1 billion, according to experts, the report said.

For this reason, as the Global Witness report has proposed, there should be a reformation of the Anti-Corruption Law which will leave no room for Hun Sen and his family members to continue their exploits with impunity. They should, as the report also recommended, also be obliged to publicly declare their assets and business holdings in order to boost the culture of transparency and accountability in Cambodia.

For those of us who are in the Philippines this is Déjà vu all over again.. i.e. Marcos….

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