Hun Sen Settles Into Power in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia â€”  This country’s new boss began settling comfortably into power Saturday, making a triumphant visit to a village near here while the panicked remnants of his political opposition continued to slip out of the country.

Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, who seized control last weekend, laughed and joked his way through a speech to thousands of cheering peasants in the village of Ang Snourl, where he dedicated a new elementary school and a rebuilt pagoda that now bears his name in large red letters.

In a blunt reminder of the new regime, an armored personnel carrier was parked directly behind the stage. Hun Sen warned the assembled reporters against “exaggeration,� and he accused the media of bias, asserting that editors have fired or cut the salaries of journalists who do not “write bad news or insults� about him.

Hun Sen’s remarks sent a shiver through the Cambodian press corps. Over the past two years, there have been a number of assassination attempts against journalists and at least two assassinations, and there were unconfirmed rumors last week of arrests and killings of journalists working for the outspoken, sometimes vitriolic opposition press.

“The bill of goods that was sold to us in 1993, that Cambodia would be a democracy with freedom of expression, is gone,� said a Western journalist working in Phnom Penh, the capital, referring to U.N.-sponsored elections that year. “The signatories of the [1991] Paris peace accords should be thinking of the people they made promises to, and taking care of them. . . . They need to be offered a way out� of the country.

A senior human rights official Saturday confirmed the executions of two more members of ousted First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s royalist FUNCINPEC party, bringing the number of known deaths in the custody of Hun Sen’s forces to four.

David Hawk of the U.N. Center for Human Rights in Cambodia said that Korch Yoeum, an undersecretary of state for defense, and Som Narin, deputy commander of the Phnom Penh military region, have been killed.

Hun Sen insists that he has not ousted Ranariddh and that his takeover is not a coup. In recent days, he has been consolidating his power and trying to legitimize his regime by co-opting--critics say intimidating--the remnants of Ranariddh’s party.

Hun Sen has called on FUNCINPEC members to vote to replace Ranariddh as party leader and choose someone else as first prime minister, while he retains the post of second prime minister.

If he succeeds in engineering the choice of a royalist leader willing to cooperate with his rule, Hun Sen would buttress his claims that he has violated neither the constitution nor the power-sharing arrangement between his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and FUNCINPEC that was endorsed by the United Nations after the 1993 elections.

At least three party figures who are hostile to Ranariddh are being mentioned as candidates for the job. One is Toan Chhay, a popular leader who returned from New York to Cambodia on Friday vowing to rebuild the shattered party.

“If the Cambodian people need me to be prime minister, I will accept,� Toan Chhay said Saturday, according to Japan’s Kyodo News Service. “Of course I’ve got to work with Hun Sen, because we are partners� in the coalition government, he said.

But FUNCINPEC members of parliament who remain loyal to Ranariddh said they are unwilling to install a “Hun Sen puppet� who would only legitimize in the eyes of the international community what they see as an illegal strongman regime.

These party members say they have been receiving telephone calls from members of Hun Sen’s party inviting them to lunch or meetings and pressuring them to elect a figurehead. Amid reports that Hun Sen is hunting down and arresting his enemies, they are afraid to refuse, they say.

Two such frightened members of parliament were among the hundreds of aid workers, business people and tourists departing from Phnom Penh’s airport Saturday.

Although security at the airport was beefed up Saturday, with military police checking passports and patrolling the grounds, the members of parliament were allowed to leave without incident.

The family of the slain Korch Yoeum was also on the plane, according to a human rights worker, who said, “They were scared stiff.�

Fighting between CPP and FUNCINPEC forces in northwestern Cambodia continued for a third day Saturday. News agencies reported that Hun Sen’s forces appeared to have the upper hand and the opposition forces were in retreat.