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Cambodia politics: A sudden outbreak of niceness(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)COUNTRY BRIEFING FROM THE ECONOMIST Hun Sen's change of heart THESE are bewildering times for followers of Cambodian politics. Opposition supporters, treated for years to vitriolic attacks accusing the prime minister, Hun Sen, of everything from corruption to murder, are now being told by their once abrasive leader Sam Rainsy that "We are no longer enemies, but partners in dialogue." Earlier this month, Mr Rainsy made a dramatic return from exile. A year before, he had fled to France after being stripped of his parliamentary immunity. In December, he had been sentenced to prison for 18 months, in absentia, for defaming Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the president of the royalist party. But the sentence was overturned by royal pardon, on the prime minister's recommendation. Mr Rainsy announced on his arrival back in Phnom Penh that his bitter personal disputes with Hun Sen had been discarded, and specifically recanted his claim that the prime minister was behind a deadly grenade attack in 1997 and other violence against his party. The man who used to fear assassination by Hun Sen's security forces now enjoys the protection of 12 bodyguards from the ministry of interior. Mr Rainsy's case last year was the precursor to worse. Five outspoken critics of Hun Sen were jailed and others prudently fled during a government crackdown in December and January. The arrest of a prominent human-rights activist, Kem Sokha, soon after Christmas, sparked an international outcry. But in response to outside pressure and with a weather eye on an annual conference of donors due in Phnom Penh next month, Hun Sen, Asia's longest-serving prime minister, has shifted gears. The five dissidents were released, Mr Rainsy is back and Hun Sen has agreed to get rid of the law on criminal defamation that was used against him. Cambodia's unpleasantly confrontational politics could do with a change. But many human-rights groups think it is too soon to celebrate. True, Cambodia is not exactly a totalitarian state: it has a free press and is home to plenty of human-rights NGOs. But Kem Sokha, recently freed from prison, calls Cambodia's a yoyo democracy. "Democracy is in the hands of the prime minister," he says. "He can give it and he can take it away at any time." SOURCE: The Economist |