No opposition. No choice. Cambodia’s election paves way for dynastic rule

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, 70, declared a landslide victory in general On Sunday, the vote was widely dismissed by critics as a hoax designed to boost the party a base before the expected transfer of power to his eldest son. The competition was practically a one-horse race, with Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, a political titan with a massive war chest, facing no viable opponent after a years-long crackdown on his rivals. The polls closed with a turnout of 84% according to the Election Commission, with 8.1 million people voting in a much-criticised contest between the CPP and 17 mostly obscure parties, none of which won seats in the last election in 2018. We won in a landslide. . . “But we can’t count the number of seats yet,” said CPP spokesman Sok Esan.

Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for 38 years, has announced that at some point after the election, he will hand over the position to his eldest son, General Hun Maneh, 45. No time frame was set for the handover until Thursday, when Hun Sen indicated his son “may” be prime minister next month. But Hun Sen made it clear that he would remain as a power behind the throne. “Even if I am no longer prime minister,” he said in June, “I will still control politics as the head of the ruling party.” Hun Sen stressed the family nature of this transition, saying at a party meeting last year, “I will become the father of the prime minister after 2023 and the grandfather of the prime minister in the 2030s.”
More than 9.7 million people are registered to vote in Cambodia’s seventh election since the first UN-sponsored poll in 1993 after years of conflict, including the era of the Khmer Rouge genocide, that devastated the country. But this dynastic succession within the parliamentary system, at Hun Sen’s sole discretion, demonstrates his hold on power—through violence, coup, imprisonment, forced exile, and manipulation of the courts.

The only credibility opposition The party, the Candlelight Party, was axed in May. This was a replay of Hun Sen’s tactic before the last elections five years ago, when politicized courts forced the main opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, to dissolve. As a result, Hun Sen’s party, the Cambodian People’s Party, now holds 125 seats in the National Assembly, effectively making Cambodia a one-party state.