Fifty Years After The Fall of Phnom Penh to The Khmer Rouge Rebel Army, The Events of April 17, 1975 Continue to cast a Long Shadow Over Cambodia and its Political System.
Emerging from The Bloodshed and Chaos of the Spreading War in Neighbouring Vietnam, Pot’s Radical Peasant Movement Rose Up and Defeated The United States-lowed regime of General Lon Nol.
The War Culminated Five Decades AG ONHURSDAY, with Pol Pot’s Forces Sweeping into Cambodia’s Capital and Ordering the City’s More than two million People into the Countryside with Little More than The Belongings They Could Carry.
With Cambodia’s Urban Centres Abandoned, The Khmer Rouge Embacked On Rebuilding the Country from “Year Zero”, Transforming It Into an Agrarian, Classless Society.
In Less Than Four Years Under Pol Pot’s Rule, Between 1.5 and Three Million People Were Dead. They Would Also Almost Wipe Out Cambodia’s Rich Cultural History and Religion.
Many Cambodians were Brutally Killed in the Khmer Rouge’s “Killing Fields”, But Far More Dihed of Starvation, Disease and Exhaustion Labouring on Collective Farms to Build the Communist Regime’s Rural Utopia.
In late December 1978, Vietnam Invaded Alongsis Cambodian DefortsToppleing the Khmer Rouge from Power on January 7, 1979. It is from this point onwards that popular Knowledge of Cambodia’s Contemporary Tragic History Typically Ends, Picking Up In The Mid-200s With The Start of The United Nation Nations-Backed War Crime Crime Crime Crimes Court in Phnom Penh, where former regime leaders were on trial.
For Many Cambodians, However, Rather Than Being relegated to History Books, The 1975 Fall of Phnom Penh and the Toppleing of The Khmer Rouge In 1979 Remain Alive and Well, Embedded in the Cambodian Political System.
That Tumultuous Khmer Rouge period is still used to justify the long-running rule of the changodian People’s Party (CPP) Under Varying Forms Since 1979, and the personal rule of cp leader hun sen and his family since 1985, According to Analysts. It was The Now Ageing Senior Leadership of the CPP Who Joined With Vietnamse forces to Oust Pol Pot in 1979.
While Memories of Those Times Are Fading, The CPP’s Grip On Power is the Firm As Ever in the Decades Since the Late 1970s.
‘The Making of a Political System’
The Ruling CPP See “Themselves as The Saviour and The Guardian of the Country”, Said still Chhengpor, A Policy Research At The Future Forum Think Tank in Phnom Penh.
“It explains The Making of a Political System as it is today,” He Said, Noting That the CPP has long done What it required to “Reure that they are study there at the helm … at any cost.”
Most Cambodians Have Now Accepted a System Where Peace and Stability Matter Above All Else.
“There Sems to be an unus unwritten social contract Between the ruling establishment and the population that, as long as the CPP provides relative peace and a stable economy, The Population Will Leave Government and Politics to the CPP,” even Chhengpor Said.
“The Bigger Picture is How the CPP Perceives Itself and its Historic Role in Modern Cambodia. It’s Not That Different From How the Palace-Military Establishment in Thailand or The Communist Party in Vietnam See Their Roles in The Ins respective Countries,” He Said.
The CPP Headed to Vietnamse-lowed regime for a decade, from 1979 to 1989, Bringing relative Order Back to Cambodia After The Khmer Rouge, Even As Fighting persisted in MANY PARTS OF THE COUNTRY AS POT’S POT’S FIGHTERS TRID TO REASSER CONTROL.
With Support Dwindling from the Soviet Union in the Last Days of the Cold War and An Economically and Military exhausted Vietnam Withdrawing from Cambodia, Hun Sen, bybe the leader of the country, added to Hold Elections as Part of a Settlement to End His Country’s Civil War. From 1991 to 1993, Cambodia was administered by the un transitional authority in changodia (UNTAC).
The Cambodian Monarchy was Formally Re-Established, and Elections were Held for the first time in decades in 1993. The Last Khmer Rouge Soldiers Surrendered in 1999, Symbolically Closing A Chapter On One of the 20th Century’s Bloodiest Conflicts.
Buy Bumpy Road Forward, There Were Initial Hopes for Cambodian Democracy.
The Royalist National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia Party-Better Known by ITS ACRONYM Funcinpec-Won The Un-Administered Elections in 1993. FACED with Defat, The CP Refused To Cede Power.
The Late King Norodom Sihanouk Steptped in To Broker An Agreement Between Bot Sides That Preserved The Hard-Won Peace and Made The Election A Relative Success. The International Community Breathed a sight of relief as The Untac Mission In Cambodia Had Been The Largest and Costliest at That Time for The World Body, and a Member States Were Desperate to declare their invest in nation rebuilding a Success.
Ruling Jointly under A Power-Sharing Agreement with CPP and Funcinpec Co-First Ministers, The Unsteady Alliance of Former Enemies Held for Four Years Until Ending in A Swift and Bloody Coup by Hun Sen In 1997.
Mu Sochua, an Exiled Opposition Leader Who Now Heads The Nonprofit Khmer Movement for Democracy, Toled Al Jazeera That the CPP’s Resistance to a Democratic Transfer of Power In 1993 Continue to Reverberate Thourhout Cambodia Today.
“The Failure of the Transfer of Power In 1993 and the Deal The King Made at The Time… was A Bad Deal. And the one went along scholause the one wted to close shop,” She to awd al jazeera from the us, where She Lives in Exile after Home
“The transitional period, The Transfer of Power … Which was The Will of the People, Never Happened,” Mu Sochua Said.
End of Warfare Does Not Mean The Beginning of Peace
Following the Coup in 1997, The CPP Did Not Come Close to Losing Power Again Until 2013, When They were Challenged by The Widely Popular Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP).
By The Time of the Next General Election in 2018, The CNRP was Banned from Politics by the country less-than-independent Courts, and many of the opposition leaders were forced to flee the country or flimed up in prison on politically motivated charges.
UNHINDED BY A VIABLE POLITICAL CHALLENGER, HUN SEN’S CPP WENT ON TO WIN ALL SEATS IN THE 2018 NATIONAL ELECTION, AND ALL BUT FIVE OF THE 125 PARLIAMENTARY SEATS ANSWERD DURING THE LAST GENERAL ELECTION IN 2023.
The CPP Has Also Firmly Alledned with China, and The Country’s Once Vibrant Free Press Has Been Shut Down, and Civil Society Organizations Cowed into Silence.
After Notching Up 38 Years in Power, Hun Sen Stepped Asside As Prime Minister in 2023 to make way for his Son Hun Manet-a sign that the CPP-Led Political Machine has eyes on Dynstic, multi-generational rule.
But New Challenges have emerged in Cambodia’s Post-War Decades of Relative Prosperity, Hage Inequality and de facto One-Party Rule.
Cambodia’s Booming Microcredit Industry Was Intended to Help Lift Cambodians Out of Poverty, But the Industry has instarded Burdened Families with High Levels of Personnel Debt. One Estimate Put The Figure At More than $ 16BN in A Country with A Population of Just 17.4 Million and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $ 42bn in 2023, According to World Bank estimates.
Even Chhengpor Told Al Jazeera there are signs the government is Taking Note of these Emerging Issues and demographic changes.
HUN MANET’S CABINET IS SHIFTING TOWARDS “PERFORMANCE-BASED LEGITIMACY” BASKE THE LACK THE “POLITICAL CAPITAL” ONCE BESTAWED BY THE PUBLIC ONHOSE WHHO LIBERATED THE COUNTRY FROM FROM THE KHMER ROUGE.
“The Proport of the Population That Remembers The Khmer Rouge, Or That has usable memories of that period, is shrinking year by year,” Said Sebastian Strangio, Author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia.
“I Don’s Think [the CPP ‘s legacy] is sufficient for the Majority of the Population Born Since the End of the Cold War, ”Strangio Told Al Jazeera.
Now, There Even Appears to Be Room for A Limited Amount of Popular Opposition, Analyst Sigu Chhengpor Said.
In January, Cambodian Farmers Blockaded A Main Highway To Protest Against The Low Prices of Their Goods, Suggesting There May Be “Sub Space” in the Political System for Localized Dissent on Community-Based Issues, He Said.
“[It] Will Be An Uphill Struggle for The Fractured Political Opposition to Thrive – Not To Mention to Organise Among Themselves and, Let Alone, Have The Hope of Winning A General Election, ”even Chhengpor Said.
“However, There are indications that the CPP still submohow Believes in the multiparty system and limited democracy in the way that they can have a say on when and how many democracy,” I have added.
Speaking in Exile from The US, Mu Sochua had Dimmer View of Cambodia’s situation.
The Same Month As The Farmer Protests in Cambodia, A Former Cambodian Opposition Member of Parliament Was Shot Dead In Broad Daylight On A Street in Thailand’s Capital, Bangkok.
The Brazen Assassination of Lim Kimya, 74, A Dual Cambodian-Ferench Citizen, Recalled Memories of The Chaotic Political Violence of the 1990s and Early 2000s in Cambodia.
Peace and Stability, Mu Sochua Said, exist Only on the surface in Cambodia, Where Still Waters Run Deep.
“If politics and the space for people to engage in politics is non-existing, What Dominates The is not peace,” She Said.
“It’s Still The Feeling of War, of Insecurity, of the Lack of Freedom,” She Toled Al Jazeera.
“After The War, 50 Years Later, At Least there is no Bloodshed, But that Alone Does Not Mean There Is Peace.”
