🇰🇭Second Hun, same as the first

Hello friends!

I’m back-ish. I’m feeling much better - thank you for all the kind words - but still a bit slow and kind of dumb. 

Today and tomorrow I want to catch up on a few of the big things of the last week or so. Today, let’s check in with Hun Manet in Cambodia and this week’s raft of announcements from the military junta in Myanmar.

Tomorrow, I will have an enormous paracetamol and crack into Thailand. That’s certainly the biggest story this week but also extraordinarily confusing.

I also can’t work out any style functions on this iPad, so please excuse the dashes instead of em-dash. I know a lot of readers will understand that particular pain. I’m also in a war with iOS auto correct.

See you tomorrow,

Erin Cook

Hun Manet rises

It’s happening! Allegedly, at least. Off the back of Cambodia People’s Party ‘landslide win’ in elections last month, Prime Minister Hun Sen is stepping down and 45-year-old son Hun Manet is stepping up. Like many things Hun Sen says, I’m reserving judgement until it actually happens but it does look very likely to be the real deal. Still, as Ou Virak told the AP: “He won’t let go, he can’t let go.”

So, who is Hun Manet? He’s not exactly his dad, who was forged in the heady 1970s as a young Khmer Rouge recruit before fleeing for Vietnam. He made his way back to Phnom Penh and eventually became prime minister in 1985. That’s the extreme shortcut version. In contrast, son Hun Manet has had a plush upbringing, attending great schools around the world and enjoying opportunities most young Khmer don’t get.

This Nikkei piece notes that while the scion has long been tapped as successor - floated all the way back in 1996, but more formally in 2021 - he’s never really indicated a vision for his leadership. ‘Instead, he appears to emulate his father's speaking style and mannerisms, exhorting the CPP's claimed legacy of "peace, stability and development" while attacking his father's political rivals with the same aggression the elder has employed for decades,’ Shaun Turton writes.

That doesn’t look to be changing just yet. After the announcement last month, Hun Manet wrote in a statement that: “My father’s word that I will always remember and be determined to apply in all circumstances: ‘When you become the prime minister of Cambodia, you must maintain peace to ensure the development and tranquility of the people,’” as per RFA.

Given what we know about dad’s style of governance, this doesn’t bode well. The world isn’t so naive anymore to believe that an elite education naturally translates to liberalism for the kids of strongmen. Hun Manet simply has no incentive to change the ways of power laid out by his father. And, indeed, while Hun Sen remains alive it will be very difficult for Hun Manet to fight off the ‘dad is pulling the strings’ allegations. 

Reuters reports Hun Sen laughed when answering a question from a Phnom Penh Post reporter on any changes under the new leadership: “In what way? Any such divergence means disrupting peace and undoing the achievements of the older generation.”

The succession should be imminent with Hun Sen waiting for the post-election dust to settle.

Big announcements, but little hope

The Myanmar military junta this week cut six years from a 33-year prison sentence for the former de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She will serve the sentence under house arrest. It’s part of a countrywide political prisoner amnesty that saw 7,000 detainees freed. Former president Win Myint also saw four years off his sentence.

It feels like a step in the right direction, but it isn’t really. The announcement came as the junta opted to extend the state of emergency first enacted in early 2021. An editorial from the Irrawaddy notes that during a meeting on Monday, the military committed to increase military operations in states where it still has little control. This editorial is swinging hard in its condemnation and ought to be read in full. 

“In order to have an election that is free and fair and also to be able to vote without any fear, necessary security arrangements are still needed and so the period for the state of emergency has been extended,” a junta statement said Monday after agreeing to delay promised elections as part of the emergency. “We need for a time to continue our duty for systematic preparation as we shouldn’t hold coming elections in a rush,” junta boss Min Aung Hlaing said, as reported by Al Jazeera. A new date hasn’t been floated, instead expect an election when everything is settled. Right, so never?

Don’t believe the hype, writes Sean Turnell - ASSK’s economic righthand man and former detainee of the junta. ‘Cynics, the ignorant, the gullible, and various vested interests in military rule in Myanmar will loudly exclaim this news as a positive development signifying real change. It is not. Neither Daw Suu, President Win Myint, nor any of the other political prisoners being ill-treated in Myanmar’s awful jails should be there at all. The charges they were convicted on are absurd, the judicial processes under which they were reached a travesty,’ Turnell wrote for Lowy this week.