Cambodian leader hands power to son after 38 years
On Tuesday Hun Manet, a 45 year-old general educated in America and the UK, was elected prime minister of Cambodia by 123 out of 125 members of parliament. The catch? He is the son of Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia for 38 years before handing down power in a long-planned succession, following elections last month described as “neither free nor fair”. “A clan which rules by force rather than consent is renewing itself,” Sam Rainsy, an exiled opposition leader, wrote on X. “The regime has become a North Korea style hereditary dictatorship.” Hun Manet’s younger brother, Hun Many, will be the civil service minister. Hun Sen took power after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, a Maoist revolutionary group that killed a quarter of Cambodia’s population through execution and starvation in the 1970s. He has overseen rising economic growth but eradicated opposition parties and independent media, while diplomatically aligning the country with China. And he’s not going far. Hun Sen remains head of the leading Cambodian People’s Party and says if his son “fails to meet expectations”, he’ll return to power.
Photograph Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images