A dynastic government takes hold in Cambodia's 'fake elections'

70% of Cambodia's 16 million people have only known a prime minister. Almost four decades later and at the age of 70, the Cambodian, who is only surpassed by the leaders of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea with more time in office, has once again won elections (“false”, critics denounce) that bear no resemblance to the clean and democratic system that the UN sought to impose when it intervened in this Southeast Asian country torn by civil war and mass murder of civilians in the 1990s.

Little by little, Hun Sen has been sweeping away the parliamentary opposition, seized control of the courts, shut down critical media outlets, and launched harsh crackdowns on dissent.. Now, if one looks at impoverished Cambodia by most international political standards, one finds an increasingly authoritarian state under a one-party system.

In addition, everything indicates that the Hun Sen regime will soon be a dynastic government when his eldest son, General Hun Manet, is in charge of it.. The leader himself released for the first time in 2021 that his eldest son would be prime minister and last year he spoke of that transition during a meeting of the formation he leads, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).. “I will be the father of the prime minister after 2023 and the grandfather of the prime minister in the 2030s,” he said.

Voters went to the polls on Sunday (it was the seventh general election in the country's recent history) knowing there would be no surprise in the results.. “We won a landslide victory,” announced Sok Eysan, spokesman for the CPP, a few hours after the close of election day.. The final results have not yet been made public.

Criticism of the regime

Faced with criticism from human rights groups and political analysts, the government of Asia's longest-serving elected leader defends Cambodia's “multi-party democracy” arguing that up to 18 political parties were running in the elections. But they omit that, except for the ruling party, the rest are small formations that play along with the CPP, who managed to neutralize the real opposition thanks to their control of the courts.

Last May, the electoral commission prohibited the participation in these elections of the Party of the Candles, the only one that could stand up to Hun Sen at the polls. A couple of months earlier, one of Cambodia's last remaining independent newspapers, The Voice of Democracy, had also shut down, while one of the most prominent opposition figures, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 17 years of house arrest.

The government came under threat after the 2013 elections, when an alliance of parties renamed the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) won more than 40% of the vote.. Since then, the repression against the opposition has increased, getting Parliament to approve the dissolution of any political party for “security reasons”, always under the sole criteria of the ruling party.. That year, the CNRP was banned and around a hundred of its members were prosecuted, leading several leading opposition politicians to flee abroad.

Human rights groups denounce that, in the weeks leading up to these elections, several opponents were detained for organizing a campaign for voters to “damage the ballot papers in protest of the electoral race of a single horse”, while Internet service providers were ordered to block access to the websites of several independent digital newspapers that operate from outside the country.. “The stage has been set for totally illegitimate elections,” criticizes a statement from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The Reuters agency explained that the European Union and the United States had refused to send observers, alleging that the elections “lacked the conditions to be considered free and fair.”. Supervising these elections, they were envoys from Cambodia's international allies such as China and Russia.

The polls closed with a participation of 78.3%, according to the National Elections Committee, with 7.6 million people voting. After a new CPP victory, it now remains to be seen when this transition from father to son in power will take place.

Hun Sen was 33 years old when he became the world's youngest head of state.. Hun Manet, who is 45 years old, trained at the US Military Academy and studied Economics at New York University.. Now he's the boss of the army. In April of this year, he was promoted to 4-star general, the highest military rank.

Hun Jr., who is also a member of the CPP Central Committee, secured his candidacy for a parliament seat before the election which he was certain to win, paving the way for his future appointment as prime minister following in the footsteps of his father, who has been in power for 38 years.