After warning Cambodia’s opposition in regards to the imminent death of democracy in Cambodia, the historic rival, who once defeated Prime Minister Hun Sen in an election, said he had no alternative but to cooperate with the strongman.
Seventy-three-year-old Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Hun Sen’s opponent within the 1993 UN-supervised election, dismayed Cambodia’s major opposition party by calling for its dissolution after its leader was charged with high treason.
Ranariddh’s profession exemplifies not only the twists and turns in Cambodia’s politics, but in addition the best way Hun Sen, 65, has used force and cunning to neutralize enemies since fleeing the genocidal Khmer Rouge within the Nineteen Seventies to assist remove them from power.
“Samdech Hun Sen, like it or not, like him or not, he is bringing about national unity,” Ranariddh said, using the prime minister’s formal title.
“According to the law, you cannot harm national unity,” the gray-haired Ranariddh said in an interview.
Beside him, the 4 advisors nodded and clasped their hands in respect.
The royalist Funcinpec Ranariddha party didn’t win any parliamentary seats within the 2013 elections, but would receive many of the seats held by the Cambodia National Salvation Party (CNRP) whether it is dissolved following the arrest of leader Kem Sokha last month.
Funcinpec, along with the federal government, demanded a ban on CNRP activities attributable to the arrest.
Kem Sokha and his party reject the allegations against him as false and an try and extend Hun Sen’s 32-year rule on the helm of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) amid the most important crackdown on criticism of the prime minister in years.
“He is now robbing his people of their right to elect the leader of their choice by collaborating with the CPP to disband the CNRP.”
Ranariddh was called into politics from his position as a lecturer in French law by his cunning father, the late King Norodom Sihanouk.
With strong royalist sentiments, Ranariddh defeated Hun Sen within the 1993 UN-organized elections. But when Hun Sen threatened to return to war, Sihanouk struck a deal that sidelined his son as co-prime minister.
Ranariddh was exiled in 1997 after his forces were defeated by Hun Sen’s in bloody clashes in Phnom Penh.
Under international pressure, Ranariddh was allowed to run within the elections a 12 months later, but he never got here near victory again and made sporadic alliances with Hun Sen.
There were divisions throughout the party and after a period abroad amid accusations of a financial scandal, Ranariddh returned in 2015. When speaking, he switches between English and Khmer with a touch of French.
“We are not puppets,” Ranariddh said next to an enormous portrait of his father.
“We are definitely not an opposition party, but we don’t always, always, always say ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’ We can say no.
Although the United States and other Western countries helped secure Ranariddh’s return to Cambodia in the 1990s, he has rejected their criticism of Kem Sokha’s arrest and is calling on the government to end efforts to ban CNRP.
“I, Norodom Ranariddh, wish they would give us the freedom to decide,” he said.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: The political prince surrenders to the strongman
