Understanding Hun Sen
By Barry Wain
PHNOM PENH - On July 28 last year, leaders of the Cambodian People's Party gathered at the home of their boss, Hun Sen, outside the capital. They were upbeat, buoyed by reports indicating they would win the general election held two days earlier.
But Mr. Hun Sen stunned them by presenting a seven-page letter explaining that he wanted to quit. They refused to accept his resignation.
They argued that he had been the CPP's prospective prime minister formally for three months and that the party had campaigned on that basis. If he dropped out now, people who had voted for the CPP would feel cheated.
After being foreign minister first and later prime minister for nearly 20 years, he should stick around and head the new government for two or three more years at least, they said. Perhaps he could stay for the full five-year term and then decide if he wanted to contest the election in 2003.
"I would like to follow one of the German football players who, after receiving the cup, resigned and became the coach," explains Mr. Hun Sen. "He withdrew at a time of victory."
On learning what transpired at that Tuesday afternoon meeting a year ago, cynics will immediately suspect the wily Mr. Hun Sen of political maneuvering. After all, he has long outfoxed his foes inside and outside the party - and he is still at the helm today.
But in fact hardly anyone knows what Mr. Hun Sen really thinks and the extent of his ambitions. His public statements often seem contradictory, and he is the subject of lurid gossip.
He has a notoriously short fuse, but does he lose control and resort to personal violence, as rumor has it? When grenades rip through assemblies of his opponents, or they are rounded up and murdered, does he personally give the orders?
A four-and-a-half-hour conversation with Mr. Hun Sen provides an opportunity to ask the questions. He supplies the answers, speaking quietly through an interpreter and occasionally chuckling over some past event. Yet the full truth remains elusive.
One impression dominates: There is more to him than the one-dimensional, power-hungry dictator who is often portrayed in the Western press. Chain-smoking and chess-playing, he writes popular songs and takes a pen and pad to bed, ever ready to switch on the light and record inspirations for work that disturb his sleep.
Although at 46 years of age he is young by Asian standards and in good health, Mr. Hun Sen insists he is serious about retiring and may step down within four years. He says he would like to write books and contribute an occasional newspaper article, as well as give advice to the government.
He's even got the subject of two books in mind: A history to be titled "War and Peace in Cambodia," and a volume dealing with agriculture and rural development.
But keep in mind that he talked of walking away from the premiership a decade ago. He told an interviewer in 1989 much the same thing: that he was looking for a replacement so that he would have time to research and write.
Another factor is that he is subject to periodic assassination attempts and has to worry about his future security. Deep-seated grudges persist in Cambodian politics, and Mr. Hun Sen probably wouldn't feel safe if he could no longer control the armed forces.
And yet he has confided to a few close friends that he intends to depart while on top--and soon. "It's been too long for me," he says.
Asked point blank if he orders political killings, Mr. Hun Sen keeps his cool as he implicitly denies the accusation, which has widespread currency in Cambodia and abroad. The CPP and the royalist Funcinpec party were battlefield enemies for years, he says, "so it is very difficult to curb violence."
As for his involvement, "on the contrary, it is I who have to contain the situation." If CPP chiefs gave the order, he says ominously, "all Funcinpec would be killed."
Mr. Hun Sen readily acknowledges his fiery temper, which is the source of much of the speculation about him. The word on the street is that he receives psychiatric treatment, but he denies it, saying his family has no history of mental disorder.
Noting that Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who is in his 60s, is reported to be quick tempered, Mr. Hun Sen says it is only natural that he, in his 40s, should also get impatient under the pressure of work. "But I don't use my anger to make any political decisions," he says.
"The problem for me," he adds, is that he needs sleeping pills to relax. When he dreams, he says, only tormented memories of Khmer Rouge supremo Pol Pot's "killing fields" return, not the enjoyment of living in a nice house as head of the Cambodian government.
Mr. Hun Sen volunteers a denial of the most persistent rumors, that he beats his wife unconscious and that he sometimes hit his mother before she died of natural causes in 1997. Dinner guests report that he is domineering, talking incessantly during the meal while his wife scarcely says a word.
Nor is it true, he says, that he backed Brazil in last year's World
Cup football final and got so upset at losing a $100,000 bet with then-Foreign
Minister Ung Huot that he pulled a pistol and shot a TV set showing the
match. "The reality is like this: I bet on France and
I won $100 from Ung Huot."
Mr. Hun Sen also has to contend with endless whispering about his personal life, despite solid evidence that he is monogamous and effectively married to his job. "Right now, there is a rumor that I have another three wives who are single," he says.
Associates describe Mr. Hun Sen as family-oriented and determined to give their six children, one of them adopted, the first-rate formal education he missed. Four are currently studying abroad, the eldest having become in May the first Cambodian to graduate from the West Point military academy in the U.S. Mr. Hun Sen has requested - and received - protection for them from the French and American governments, after phone monitoring in Cambodia detected threats against two teenage sons in France. (He has no qualms about mentioning phone tapping.)
The only time Mr. Hun Sen left his wife - she was five months pregnant with their first child at the time - was when he fled to Vietnam to escape the Khmer Rouge regime in 1977. He helped build a rival army in exile under Vietnamese direction.
On his return to Cambodia 18 months later, he immediately separated from a second woman on discovering that his wife, contrary to reports, had survived Pol Pot's carnage and they had a son who was by then old enough to speak. (He helped the woman, who worked in his Foreign Ministry, get a prized posting abroad, in Hanoi.)
The joy of reunion was tempered by the awkward reality that Mr. Hun Sen was a total stranger to the toddler. For two months, he recalls, the boy called him not "father" but "uncle."
"It is one of the bitterest memories of my life," he says, tears rolling down his face. "I cannot forget it."